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PyO3 is bindings to the C API, so if you're using PyO3 you're still using the C API even if you're not actually writing C.

Yeah, sure, I mean, how many people write C to write an end-user Python module. There's stuff that genuinely wraps C libraries or predates higher level language wrappers, like numpy or matplotlib, but how many new modules are actually themselves written in C?

The point is that’s not relevant, the issue is the API / ABI of the modules, its requirements, and its limitations, not the langage in which the modules are written.

There's also Cython.

I would guess also that HPy would replace the includes of `Python.h` that pybind11 et al make in order to bind to CPython, and so existing extensions should be easier to port?

Quite a lot, for things like simulation code

Less so for general programming.

for C++ 11+, pybind11 > Boost.Python

for C++ 17+, nanobind > pybind11 (both created by the same developer)

">" meaning generally better, as described at https://nanobind.readthedocs.io/en/latest/why.html

A lot. You don't have to write in C, just use the C-API functions. pybind etc. introduce a whole new set of problems, with new version issues and decreased debug ability.