> C is the first language that both stayed out of your way and also provided reasonable productivity features
If we ignore the history of computers outside AT&T....
If we ignore the history of computers outside AT&T....
On IBM's, PL/I didn't cut it that regard.
On a UNIVAC you could do a lot of system programming in FORTRAN, but only because there were a zillion proprietary extensions that accessed system programming primitives.
BASIC on a Commodore 64 had PEEK() and POKE() but that doesn't count either, very non-standard.
FORTH? Nope... still asm at the bottom.
Concurrent Pascal? Nope... not safe, despite the type checking, because you could twist variant records however you liked. And I think there was asm at the bottom anyway, IIRC.
COBOL, well, CDC COBOL had a bunch of extensions, too, but you still ended up in asm for system programming.
Show me the source code for a device driver in a high-level language that pre-dates C/B/BCPL.
Just like pure ANSI C without compiler extensions.
> Standard language that never required a trip to assembly language for system level programming?
Try to implement 100% of libc in ANSI C without writing one single line of Assembly, syscalls into the underlying OS or compiler specific language extensions.
> Show me the source code for a device driver in a high-level language that pre-dates C/B/BCPL.
ESPOL on Burroughs B5000, 1961.
I call shenanigans!
That would exclude C as well.