Not a stupid question at all. It's kind of like the question why did we have to program computers in Assembler (which was great fun, BTW) and not in high level

Not a stupid question at all. It's kind of like the question why did we have to program computers in Assembler (which was great fun, BTW) and not in high level languages. It wasn't feasible. Assembly coding did continue for quite some time in the interest of performance but once the proverbial turn is taken, there is no looking back. That's where networking is now. What we still call (rigid) "protocols" should and indeed can become freestanding application code See my paper "Tearing Down the Protocol Wall" at https://www.linkedin.com/in/yitzhakbg#background-publications-container https://www.linkedin.com/in/yitzhakbg#background-publication...