[drpixie]

You seem to be answering your own questions :)

Of course, "abstraction lead[s] to less fine control" - at the the lowest (assembly) level, you can do almost anything - and make all the mistakes imaginable. Sometimes you want to genuinely maximise performance, or do things otherwise difficult - fine, use assembly and hit the hardware. But most of the time, software is made to be read, to be trouble free, to build on other's work, and to be written easily - that's when abstraction is valuable.