Comment by ghosty141

The C abstract machine is exactly the important part. There is a difference between saying C is close to "the hardware" and C is close to the C abstract machine. The latter like you described has a few concepts that allow for abstraction and thus portability but obviously they lead to situations where the "maps to the hardware" doesn't seem to hold true.

My gripe is only with people acting like the C abstract machine doesn't exist and C is just syntax sugar for a bit of assembly. It's a bit more involved than that.