Yes I fully agree. I’m a big fan of libraries like Google Tink that make you pick a use case and use the best implementation for that use case with built in crypto agility.
Most crypto libraries are not built like that however. They just give you a big pile of primitives/algorithms to choose from. Then frameworks get built on top of that, not always taking into account best practices, and leave people that are serious about security the job of making sure the implementation is secure. This is the point where you need something like ASVS.
What language today still doesn't have a de facto simplified toolbox for wrapping crypto operations?
If you're a developer, and you start trying to perform crypto operations for your service and the library you chose is making you question which cipher, what KDF parameters, or what DH group you want, that is 100% a red flag and you should promptly stop using that crypto library.
Can you give some examples of such commonly used libraries for languages like Java / C# / C++?
In my experience there are not many libraries like Google Tink around, and they are not in widespread use at all. Most applications doing encryption manually for specific purposes still have the words AES, CBC, GCM, IV etc hardcoded in their source code.
If you review such code, it’s still useful to have resources that show industry best practices, but I agree that the gold standard is to not have these details in your own code at all.
Most crypto libraries are not built like that however. They just give you a big pile of primitives/algorithms to choose from. Then frameworks get built on top of that, not always taking into account best practices, and leave people that are serious about security the job of making sure the implementation is secure. This is the point where you need something like ASVS.