assembler

Then, the simple optimizations that machines are good at can be performed from there along with generation of assembler.

For software people following, it would be like trying to build Microsoft Word with assembler while competition was using C/C++.

It's almost certainly not done, but they do have something more than just an assembler.

I wrote a version of it in ARM Thumb assembler for the Cortex-M0 and it sounded quite good.

In some respects, assembler language is actually at a higher level than C.

Close to portability of C and efficiency of hand-written assembler with inline available.

Contrary to popular belief, x86_64 assembler isn't really that bad to deal with.

Since an optimizing compiler is free to go to town on functions such as string comparison, are these functions typically written in assembler per-architecture?

Not implausible at all that someone using assembler could do better still.

I know there exists tools for source code analysis that deal directly with assembler, because I see theses around writing them.

QuickBasic, Pascal, C or Assembler for writing programs.

It really is like building Word with assembler.

The "problem" here isn't that you have somehow failed to leap my bar, the problem is that the bar is impractically high for code written in raw assembler.

One particularly common method is called "functions" (if you have ever coded in assembler, you will know what luxury that is).

Here's a short-list of some very simple things you can easily do in assembler which are either hard for a compiler to do, or which requires all kinds of extra optimization "magic".

Late Sunday night here, but before I sign off for the night, thought you'd be amused to know that the name rwasa really, truly was an acronym from "Rapid Web Application Server in Assembler".

You already named the most appropriate tools (Assembler, C, C++, and Forth), and learning at least one of them is very easy.