There is a (relatively) common API: machine language. Is that too architecture-specific? You could force all programming languages compile down to Java byte co

There is a (relatively) common API: machine language. Is that too architecture-specific? You could force all programming languages compile down to Java byte code, but that would be too restrictive. Not everyone wants to be bound by byte code. You could create a language that aims to accomplish what you describe, but then you'd just have yet another programming language. (Insert relevant XKCD here.) And humans either aren't smart enough to create a perfectly flexible language without warts that would work for people doing dramatically different things, or there are too many tradeoffs for those people to share the same den. Someone who has thought more about the philosophy of programming languages probably could answer that better than I could.