We keep going on about this as if it's in any way different from every other situation where we've benefited significantly from an abstraction from the underlyi

We keep going on about this as if it's in any way different from every other situation where we've benefited significantly from an abstraction from the underlying machine. But reflecting the underlying machine was not just a completely reasonable default it was the most viable performant option at the time. And provided a clean enough means for writing cross platform compilers for more abstracted languages. We probably took too long coming up with validated optionals as an abstraction, but so much is obvious in retrospect. There is a lot that can be done, that must be done, but should only be done rarely - but the powers provided by a language that reflects the underlying machine are vital nonetheless. You shouldn't be writing goto on a daily basis, but it's very useful for custom loop definitions.