The author explains that the intended target is Windows, which has neither Perl nor Python (nor even Bash) installed by default, so "already installed everywhere" is already off the table. At that point, since Rust can produce static binaries, it doesn't matter what deps you pull in.

Sure, but it's not that bad. Cargo is fantastic, once you have the dependencies in your manifest, `cargo build` downloads and compiles all your dependencies for you. It's pretty hassle free.