First of all, maybe you should try learning a fantasy assembly language. It's not as hard as you seem to think. You know how driving many different cars makes y

First of all, maybe you should try learning a fantasy assembly language. It's not as hard as you seem to think. You know how driving many different cars makes you a better driver? It's the same with computers. The best programmers have programmed many different computers. A high level language forces you to see the world through its lens. Just look how differently an algorithm would be implemented in C compared to Lisp, for example. One uses a high level language because it makes things you do often much more convenient. The great benefit of C is being able to pointer arithmetic in an extremely convenient way. Lisp is more about programming in the way your brain likes to actually think, which makes it quite pleasurable. But unfortunately neither is how any computer actually works. So instead of choosing some arbitrary fashionable lens, Knuth chooses no lens, but instead invents a computer that is good for teaching, rather than being good for manufacturing and selling.