Yeah, I felt this way many times with Axe. One good solution, though, is to use a high level compiled language (Axe/C/C++) with some assembly mixed in every now and then. That way you get the best of both worlds. It's what I do.

...and then a major compiler like MSVC++ drops inline assembly on AMD64 targets. Unfortunately even mid-level languages like C/C++ can't always get low level enough.