Recently I had to write a program for an embedded Linux router which ran on a MIPS architecture and had a 2MB flash. I only had about 40kb of space to fit the application on. I was able to get a binary that was compiling to more than 1.5mb down to 20kb through using a combination of gcc tricks like separating data and code sections, eliminating unused sections, statically linking some libraries and dynamically linking against others. It once again gave me immense appreciation for having a language and toolchain that can give you this power for those 1% of problems your career might depend on.

For amusement, the relevant section of the Makefile I ended up with:

LIB_NL_MIPS_STATIC=libs/libnl_mips_static

CFLAGS=-Os -I$(LIB_NL_BASE)/include -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -Wall -Wextra -MD

LDFLAGS=-Wl,--gc-sections -L$(LIB_NL_MIPS_STATIC) -Lbuild -Wl,-Bstatic -lmon -lnl-3 -lnl-route-3 -Wl,-Bdynamic -lpthread -lm -lc

I'm unsure how many other languages/toolchains give you that sort of flexibility down to the linking level. Also it's self contained and doesn't require some kind of "virtual machine" or interpreter to run it.