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> 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.

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.

You shouldn't complain about extensions to the language. C needs extensions too. For example, many architectures have 3 (or more) memory spaces: program/code, data, IO. If you want to do anything on IO, you'd have to rely on non-standard (proprietary) extensions to C, or, like FORTH, get to asm at the bottom, and call those functions from your C program.

FORTH? Nope... still asm at the bottom.

I call shenanigans!

Either my sarcasm detecter is broken today, or you've never read the source code of a FORTH system. Or perhaps you are commenting that FORTH doesn't have high-level programming constructs -- but of course FORTH allows meta-programming, so you roll your own.

I'm saying that it's shenanigans that he's justifying disqualifying FORTH as a systems programming language because "it's ASM at the bottom." So I'm on your side of that debate.

> Example? Standard language that never required a trip to assembly language for system level programming?

That would exclude C as well.