[raverbashing]

Of course. That's why people should write 90% of the non-speed-limited code in something higher level and the speed critical things in C

"And contrary to what is spattered on the boards, C is not an understandable, close-to-the-metal wrapper around assembly instructions (compilers have advanced quite a bit)"

Yes, it isn't BUT it is (due to compilers supporting) the language where you can drop down to assembler or something closer to it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/26td21ds(v=vs.80).as... in the easiest way