[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.

[setr]

I’m not sure you’re actually heading down the path of assembly in terms of the language itself, but you’re definitely moving towards the architectural lock-in of assembly.

But maybe thats fine if the language can express architectural-specific decisions (like memory layout) and abstract it away in a more sane fashion than ifdefsc and the rest of the codebase can maintain the pretense of portability.