[crazypyro]

To be fair, currently most of those tools involve low level linking to C code for performance-critical computations, no?

[pjmlp]

Actually C++, as most studios have moved away from pure C around the PS2 timeframe.

But the reason it is not always performance. Sometimes it is reusing already existing, battlefield tested proven code.

However, I can rephrase your question by replacing C with inline Assembly and we are back to the discussions I was having around 25 years ago.