And in x86 at least, even the assembly gets sliced and diced behind the scenes.
There have been comments to the same effect on HN before, but I look at language design as an API between humans and computers. Computers need as strict rules on how to execute a thing as possible: humans need something comprehensible. The ideal language finds ways you can increase the former without decreasing the latter (in ways they notice).
I think however there is some fundamental communication issues talking about "compilers vs language". Optimizing compilers, by definition, rewrite your code into a "better" form. Even if you are writing C/C++ you probably don't really know what's happening at the register level. Heck, with todays CPUs I wonder if even assembly people know what's actually happening in the registers!