Which programming environments that do not allow calling C API functions also let you build/ship arbitrary C executables, though? (Genuinely curious what scenarios this unlocks.)
I use it for SQLite Database access in Go and Java. Java lets you theoretically interface with C code, but it's a lot of JNI/DLL/SO work. It's much easier for me to just os/exec (or Runtime/exec in Java) and send data back and forth. Your mileage may vary, of course.