[cdavid]

I was comparing LAPACK to the C library: nobody claims it is weird to use the C library, written > 30 years ago, instead of using something 'more modern'. Everybody uses the C library for system/low level programming, the same is true in numerical computing w.r.t. blas/lapack. Numpy/scipy use it, R use it, julia use it, matlab use it, octave use it.