I think there's a lot of worth using a high level language and integrating with C. It depends on the interface of course, XS (Perl) isn't too user friendly, but actually just using the Python C APIs is straightforward, rather than say Cython for example. I think you get the best of both worlds, but really it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want more type safety, then OK maybe not but if you want to interface with some low level components, or want to write a faster algorithm. Basically you can be more focused and granular with the unsafe and more error prone C side and tame it with a higher level language. Anyway, this is just my opinion but I've enjoyed this area very much and it has worked well for me.