> there is a very straightforward correspondence between the model-machine and assembly/C
I believe one of the points the article is making is that, no, there is not. Pin down a C developer's actual understanding of how C is converted into x86 or x86-64 assembly, and you find that nobody actually has that abstraction riding around in their heads, because the abstraction they do have riding around in their heads would make for some unacceptably non-performant code. Even if we disregard the fact that x86 is emulated on modern hardware, the C -> (Clang + LLVM / gcc) -> assembly path is deeply complicated.
I believe one of the points the article is making is that, no, there is not. Pin down a C developer's actual understanding of how C is converted into x86 or x86-64 assembly, and you find that nobody actually has that abstraction riding around in their heads, because the abstraction they do have riding around in their heads would make for some unacceptably non-performant code. Even if we disregard the fact that x86 is emulated on modern hardware, the C -> (Clang + LLVM / gcc) -> assembly path is deeply complicated.