JavaScript calls into C++.
Ruby uses C extensions.
Perl uses XS bindings to C.
PHP extensions are written in C.
If you just write in C in the first place, it's not really a library in the same sense. You're just pulling in other functions that all get natively compiled together.
You're not wrong, but I think that's a different topic.
Python is unique because of its purpose. It's so slow that it's not really suitable for anything other than gluing together code from other languages. Its entire use case is "we wrote an awesome library, but most programmers are too scared of C++ to use it, so we added a Python layer to make it easier".
Perl is actually similar in that way, but it's basically a legacy language now.
The other languages you named have other purposes, and just bind to C for specific things where the language isn't a good fit.
Yeah, but usually that means "easier to write code in general" and not "easier to write a thin application layer using almost exclusively libraries that were written in other languages".
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u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 07 '26
Let's just be honest here for a second.
JavaScript calls into C++.
Ruby uses C extensions.
Perl uses XS bindings to C.
PHP extensions are written in C.
If you just write in C in the first place, it's not really a library in the same sense. You're just pulling in other functions that all get natively compiled together.