I agree. And I find it interesting that everyone seems to think the alternative is having a handful of hard coded sizes (8, 16, 32, 64). I don't think that's the answer either.

I imagine a language without any concrete integer type, instead you have to parameterize. For example int<32> for a 32 bit integer. Syntax is debatable but that's the idea.

It's great cuz it can work on even weird hardware, I can make an int<13> for 13 bit machines.

And you can make typedefs for common stuff. Like a size_t mapping to int<32> or a word_t mapping to int<16>. Whatever you need.

I've been meaning to make a compiler to test the idea out. Someday maybe