[zero_one_one]

I agree - my main point is that an OS is ‘just a program’ as well

I suspect we’re both making a similar point in a roundabout way - the operating system is both another layer of abstraction on top of the Instruction Set, while also making the programming process for that chipset somewhat easier (providing software interrupts etc. at the expense of bare metal understanding).

My argument is loosely that modern (x64) assembly is not so much targeting hardware as it is programming into a software abstraction (the operating system).