Given the prevalence of Cython, it's actually really easy to use the Python API pretty easily in "C", so it's actually a huge waste if the C API matches the Python API too closely. The power and utility of the C API will be in how it *differs* from the Python API. For the distribution methods, this is largely in how it lets you sample one number at a time without bothering with the numpy and broadcasting overhead. That's the driving motivation for having a C API for the distributions, and the algorithms that we choose have consequences for the C API that will best satisfy that motivation.