I definitely am thinking of something more Rust-forward. As Rusty as possible without having to worry about lifetimes, the borrow checker, whatever. Huge performance hit is acceptable, so long as it remains trivial to intermix the Rust+scripting code. Something that gives a smooth on-ramp to push the heavy bits into pure Rust if required. The Python+C strategy in a more integrated package.

The world is mad. After a decade of this, I give up. The cycles never end.