An unappreciated means of code reuse under *nix is the static and dynamic library. This seems to be the go-to whenever you need something more involved than simply reusing a full binary via pipes.
Most higher level languages I've worked with seem to focus on using .so files rather than producing them.
This means the lowest common denominator for the unix ecosystem is what C can provide. Otherwise stated, unix is marching forward at the pace of C.