Assuming one wants to call C++ code from Python (the common case) I would even start with simple pipe-based IPC and just build an executable in C++ that acts as

Assuming one wants to call C++ code from Python (the common case) I would even start with simple pipe-based IPC and just build an executable in C++ that acts as a bridge between Python (or any other language in this case) and C++. E.g. using JSON serialization it would look like this: $LANG (e.g. Python) <-> JSON <-> Pipe <-> JSON <-> C++ If this is too slow I still wouldn't use a binding generator (SWIG, etc.), but build a C API using opaque pointers that offer the required functions, i.e. a bridge between C and C++. Finally one can simply call into this API with Python's ctypes which are part of its standard library. Python <-> ctypes <-> C-API <-> C++ I have worked previously with SWIG, but my experience has been very bad, in particular the problem with binding generators is similar to the problem parser generator face - they make the simple stuff simple and the hard stuff hard. Furthermore the bindings that are auto-generated are mostly too low-level, so one normally writers wrappers around them to make them more "pythonic" which raises the questions why not write the bindings from scratch anyway?