Assembly language is the lower bound here. This is a 100% correct fact that nothing can use less energy than assembly language. No such statement can be made about other languages.
Not necessarily. Sometimes compilers give better programs than a programmer can with optimization and stuff.
Right but if I write a program that converts code into assembly and does the optimizations automatically then I can get something better or equal to a compiler.
Isn't that exactly a compiler?
Yes. And all of my statements are 100% correct except for this one.
Compiled Forth would give Assembly a run for its money and produce smaller code as well.
But could forth beat compiled Assembly language? I think not.