"x86 is a high-level language": https://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level-languag... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264195
Everything's an API at the end of the day.
There was an article on here recently about the practical effects of the TLS 1.3 drafts, and how they broke proxies. I can't find it. It was talking about how the proxies choked because so many variable wire bits in TLS 1.2 stayed static for so long they rusted in place in proprietary implementations, and the proxies crashed once the values changed (despite this being a concrete protocol violation). This situation reminds me of that.