> I think the cost and work remains the same. What has change is efficiency. Previously people had to manually program byte after byte. Then came C and streamlined it, allowing faster development.

I think you got your history wrong. People didn’t program bit by bit. They programmed on paper (flowcharts, pseudo-code, diagrams,…), then encoded that afterwards. There was a lot of programming languages before C like Lisp and APL (which are high-level, btw). Why would they waste precious computer time, when you could plan out procedures on a notepad or a whiteboard.