I've dealt with a couple systems that link Lisp 'trivially' to C. When they say they link trivially, what they mean is that they let you call the function in th

I've dealt with a couple systems that link Lisp 'trivially' to C. When they say they link trivially, what they mean is that they let you call the function in the C library just like you'd call it from C. This is frequently extremely not how you want to do it in Lisp, and so you're forced to either a) write a Lispification layer, in which you take all the C functions and turn them into a library that acts like you want a Lisp library to act (the usual approach), or b) just write it like it's in C, which makes you very angry all day long, and also loses some of the benefit of writing in Lisp. Both approaches slow you down quite a lot. Especially if you decide not to be an asshole and release your lispification layer as open-source (which you should)-- because then people will all be pounding down your door for fixes and extensions and maintenance for new versions of the C library, which is not what you want to do. You didn't even want to write the layer to begin with, presumably. So no, 'trivial' C linking not actually a silver bullet making everything hunky-dorey with respect to lack of libraries. Python has a significant advantage in that it's popular enough for many people to have already gone through the Pythonification process for most important libraries, and have also open-sourced their Pythonification layers.