[unsnap_biceps]

    I feel (fear?) we are basically locked in to a world where C, C++, Rust, Go, Python and Javascript will be the assembly code we compile to

I actually think that AI will largely rendered these "abstractions' meaningless in the future. We need higher order programming languages because it reduces our cognitive load, but AIs won't have the same limitation, and by going directly to the lowest level, they'll be able to find additional performance gains that are way too difficult for compilers to do.