[jezze]

True, it doesn't give you the bare machine. What it gives you is the thinnest of machine abstraction with the possibility of linking to your own assembly if you have the demand for it.

[pjmlp]

Yet another myth, plenty of languages since JOVIAL in 1958 offer similar capabilities.

[jezze]

I am curious, what was it I said that you consider to be a myth? If I have some misunderstanding I would like to know. I looked at JOVIAL on wikipedia quickly but I can't see exactly how it would be thinner than C or if it's compiler would output something vastly different to a C compiler. Or did you mean it's as thin as C but it came out earlier?

[BoredomIsFun]

Ok, if you insist on ultra precise description - "C is is the lowest level language among widely used".