You're not wrong but that's more of an issue with C than an issue with intrinsics, in higher level languages like C++ or Rust you have the option to wrap instrinsics in types which are much nicer to work with.

>C++ or Rust

Nah. I find well commented three column AT&T assembly with light use of C preprocessor macros easier and more enjoyable to read.

Now that's what I call an unpopular opinion.

Among people who write assembly regularly it's not that unpopular

Not just an eyesore, they also are typed, so any widening or narrowing or using only part of a vector register ends up needing casts so things can get really extremely confusing and cluttered when doing anything beyond basic algebra. With asm it's a much shorter, more elegant and visually-aligned waterfall of code.

Only if using x86-64 IME. Other architectures that don’t require as much shuffling of data are far more legible.