I was writing a comment asking if it was really easier. Then I took a look at Cython. Yes, this looks easier than Perl's XS, which I have some experience with! There are ways to do something similar in Perl these days, notably https://metacpan.org/pod/FFI::Platypus. But these are relatively new (starting in the 2010s) compared to the history of Perl, and Cython goes back to the early 2000s.