this is the kinda stuff that I hate about developing on the EVM - compilers/jit/etc are usually pretty good at abstracting this stuff away in other languages
are there any good tools that just rewrite/optimize these days? seems ridiculous to me to have to manually rewrite stuff using lower level primitives still

Have you tried using tools like Truffle Suite or Hardhat for Ethereum development? They provide convenient abstractions and optimizations, reducing the need for manual rewriting with lower-level primitives. Give them a shot!