[nickpsecurity]

That's true. Yet, Wirth's model is worth considering today. In Lilith system, they co-designed a high-level assembler (P-code-like), the Modula-2 language, the compiler, and critical OS regions. Built whole system on that. Key choice, learned from P-code, was to make assembler, high-level language, and compiler all consistent and simple where possible. Allowed easy composition and conversion.

Work on LISP/Scheme, Julia, REBOL, and so on show that even complex constructs can be built with macros, etc on simple ones which can be done Wirth-style as in Lilith/Oberon, my style [1], or by hand like pjmlp said. Actually, the Scheme stuff went down to synthesizing hardware from interpreters written in Scheme and another person did that with a Oberon-based HDL. So, it can go much further. :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182752