Comment by 9rx

They're nothing special, but were designed for a particular CPU and expose the details of that CPU. And since we were talking about C specifically, not a bunch of other random languages that may have did similar things...

While most modern CPUs are designed for C and thus share in the same details, if your CPU is of a different design, you have to emulate the behaviour. Which works perfectly fine — but the question remains outstanding: Where does the practical line get drawn? Is 6502 assembler actually a high-level language too? After all, you too can treat it as an abstract machine and emulate its function on any other CPU just the same as you do with C pointers.