Top-Down vs Bottom-Up

All languages can be conclusively and reliably separated into 2 major camps, those which were designed top-down and those which were implemented bottom-up.
The top down approach(example:LISP,Prolog,Haskell,Java,.NET) is creating an abstract environment and implementing a layer which translates abstractions into machine code or bytecode.
The bottom-up approach(example:Macro Assembler,Forth,C) is creating a execution chain of blocks which represent machine opcodes, with those blocks being portable abstraction of assembler.
What is your preferred approach?

In the beginning was the hardware.

Your abstract bullshite need not apply, asm and C own your sorry asses.