Apparently there is plenty disagreement about what “low level” means. Historically assembler was considered low level, and languages like C with named variables

Apparently there is plenty disagreement about what “low level” means. Historically assembler was considered low level, and languages like C with named variables and functions and nested expressions were considered high level. I have also seen C described as mid-level to indicate it is higher level than assembler but “closer to the metal” than say Java. And apparently it is now called low-level by some - wonder what assembler is then? In any case, at this point, low level and high level are only meaningful relative to other languages. The article is questioning how “close to the metal” C actually is, but some of the arguments also applies to assembler, which is not that close to the metal either these days.