> However, OSes have been written in Lisp, and it has been used for embedded programming, so it's possible to make a language with more abstractions available s

> However, OSes have been written in Lisp, and it has been used for embedded programming, so it's possible to make a language with more abstractions available similarly performant. The right abstractions even increase the possibilities for optimization a lot, not hinder it. The fact that C is fast and often faster than others is simply due to its decades lasting popularity and the work which was put into compilers over the time.