I like how Awk is just a single executable. A single-executable Perl that includes only the core library would be great. There is Microperl [0, 1], but no idea how well it compiles with more up-to-date Perl versions.

0: https://github.com/bentxt/microperl-standalone

1: Original article from 2000 by the author Simon Cozens: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_3/tpj0503-0003.html