Reminds me somewhat of Vulkan. I think the trend of making the actual specification of something lower level and less convenient is rather logical. Why burden implements with a load of convenience functions when that could be left up to libraries?

> when that could be left up to libraries?

Because those libraries will not materialize in time, and more importantly the hobbyists who are supposed to write those libraries don't have the testing capabilities of large organizations (e.g. testing across hundreds of hardware configurations).

Because the low level details tend to change over time and then it's too late and you're committed to supporting something that doesn't make sense anymore. like branch delay slots in some RISC cpus, or vulkan (https://www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-graphics-api)