[Senderman]

Assembly typically requires you to declare your own alignments. There are some higher-level assemblers, with macros and things, but you're right, there's rarely an abstract language offering low-level memory specification.

I also dislike the tendency to only expose the abstract view, although I think that trend is due to the difficulties involved in designing a language and compiler whose job is to output code for multiple architectures. Well, at least I hope that's why, because I don't know why you'd choose to offer less control in your language otherwise.

[solotronics]

probably a dumb question but if you exposed the low level memory manipulation wouldn't you just end up with something like assembly?

[Senderman]

I don't think it's a dumb question. And I think you're right: the closer you get to the way the CPU you're targeting likes its memory optimally managed, you're basically heading towards assembly.

I have notions that there can be something 'between' assembly and, for instance, C, but that's a daydream of mine without any details worked out yet.

[klodolph]

Low-level memory work, if you care about things like data locations and exact layout of memory, is possible in practice with C. There are cases where you can run into aliasing problems, but controlling the actual memory layout is no problem at all. (There are some limitations.)