No database, no filesystem, single-level store with database-like characteristics is the ideal computer model. Look at the System/38 and its descendents the AS/400 / iSeries / i for one of the best computers ever designed. "Files" could be accessed from assembly language as easily as any other memory space. Instructions were extremely high-level, late-binding, type-generic and translated ahead of time from a template. But even in 1978, these technologies weren't exactly new. It's only because the PC-compatible world is 40 years behind the mainframe/minicomputer/high-end workstation world in terms of technologies, its growth stunted by combining the worst operating system of all time with the worst CPU architecture of all time.