Answer from cs61c-ev (Roland Carlos 16583196) for Question 2
The margin for error would be lessened and programs would probably written in harder to read code (i.e. closer to assembly language). References would have to be made sure that they point to the right places (something that the assembler and linker did) and the programming language would probably be closer to assembly because there would be need intermediate step that translated high-level to assembly to machine.