With some languages the problem is solved by simply being so ubiquitous that the runtime is already on your machine. I think this is true of C, C++, Python, Jav

With some languages the problem is solved by simply being so ubiquitous that the runtime is already on your machine. I think this is true of C, C++, Python, Java... The second best thing is a fully self-contained executable like you get with Go or Rust. (I do not think it is a coincidence that both Go and Rust have been massively successful, though I think statically linked binaries are only a minimal part of that.) The third best thing is shipping the binary alongside the app. The worst thing I can think of is just not shipping a runtime. (Of course when it comes to package maintainers, it may still be desirable to ship a separate runtime package that everything links to, so as long as the language provides ABI stability for the runtime... but I like to think of package maintainer use cases as being separate from normal usage.) And of course, for developers who primarily write apps that don't "ship" to external users, it would be normal to feel puzzled about this.