The author tries to ascribe too much meaning to undefined behavior and gets some parts of this wrong, but they are correct in saying that C is not a low-level language in the context that they're using it.
I talked a bit about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20435309. Basically, the compiler has no need to do things like perform reads in the face of undefined behavior: it could output an empty executable if it wished. Maybe your specific version of the compiler does, but that doesn't mean others (or even a future version of yours) will. Trying to figure out what a compiler might do in the face of undefined behavior is generally not a worthwhile exercise.
> Trying to figure out what a compiler might do in the face of undefined behavior is generally not a worthwhile exercise.
That is exactly the point of my post! If you think I disagree with that statement, we seriously miscommunicated somewhere.
The parts you seem to be concerned about are those where I try to explain why the abstract machine is the way it is. Hardware and compiler concerns do come in at that point, and my feeling is just dogmatically giving an abstract machine won't help convince people of its usefulness.
