Being a microcontroller programmer, I'm very close to assembly, and it's bit byte and interrupts management, but I prefer using C, which in turn is very close to assembly, if you use properly. Of course you have to use it knowing what a cpu does. Unlike IBM, where compiled languages are a set of system routine calls, even for the simplest task, in microcontroller most of the instructions are translated into assembly, which makes very easy to debug, and with compact code. C++ is other breed of beast, and can be sometimes confusing in the generated code. Anyways since the very early days IBM had very good and easy to use input and output routines, that can be interfaced with very few assembly lines. Today's microcontrollers, also have easy to use hardware interfaces, you can write on a few bytes a serial port driver?
carlos feldman