Without trying to suggest the author is wrong (I'm confident he isn't) "C Minus-Minus" is interesting and does aim to be a "portable assembly language" which in

Without trying to suggest the author is wrong (I'm confident he isn't) "C Minus-Minus" is interesting and does aim to be a "portable assembly language" which in turn is pretty much a target for an abstract machine which most modern compilers can deal with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--