On the contrary having a big runtime is what makes a language portable by abstracting it from OS specific APIs.<p>I only care about OS specific code when using C or C++, not any other language with richer runtimes.<p>Actually, C&#x27;s runtime is called UNIX and is packaged as POSIX for non-UNIX OSes.<p>Any C or C++ developer that wants &quot;portable&quot; code needs to litter their code with #ifdefs, for any dependency not on the standard library.