It'd argue that the constraints of writing lower-level code can actually lead to producing better code. For instance, idiomatic C, Rust and Zig is to pass a buffer into some function, that it then fills, and the caller handles the output. This leads to having more pure, side-effect free functions, compared to the approach some higher-level languages will take of having the function allocate some stuff in its body, process it, maybe do some IO, and pass it to another function. They encourage "imperative shell, functional core", because of how difficult it is to manage memory/ownership if every random function is allocating promiscuously.
Low-level languages encourage the use of clean ownership patterns, which ultimately leads to cleaner design.
I have a lot of sympathy for that position. The thing that drives me nuts about the codebase I work in now is that it has idioms that involve "promiscuous" memory allocation and then more idioms to fix/cover it up. I'm fine with languages that require completely manual memory allocation (spent most of my career in C). I'm also fine with languages that totally take that burden away. There are tradeoffs either way, but I've seen great code in both of those styles. What I'm not fine with is languages that solve half of the problem and force programmers to learn the brain-dead rules of that half-solution to do their part. STL-heavy C++17 and beyond is, of course, the salient example. I've seen "clever" code in that style, but never great code.
Hah! Yeah, that does seem sometimes like it must have been a deliberate goal, doesn't it? Got a good laugh out of that. The number of cycles wasted by C++ compilers fumbling toward solutions that would have been obvious in a better language (thousands of server-years per day where I work) is a legitimate ecological concern.
I know personally I'd spend a lot less time on HN if C++ compiled quickly enough that I didn't have time to context switch to something else while waiting for it to compile.
Low-level languages encourage the use of clean ownership patterns, which ultimately leads to cleaner design.