On Tuesday, 8 October 2013 at 01:38:09 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Lisp is practically the definition of language minimalism,
AIUI. But I'd
maybe replace Rust/Python with JavaScript. JavaScript is
extremely
simple. (Which is a large part of what makes using it such a
pain, but I
digress.)
To clarify, I'm thinking of Common Lisp, which is definitely NOT
a minimalist language.
http://gotlisp.com/
http://www.dreamsongs.net/Files/clcrit.pdf
Before C++11 it could even be possible to say that CL was almost
as large as C++ in its feature set. Scheme is the minimalist
Lisp; its spec is only 50 pages long.
As for Javascript, I would say that it's a "simple" language in
the sense that it doesn't have a lot of features. However, all
the sharp corners of the language create a large amount of
complexity, and you have the whole thing with prototypical
inheritance... Not to mention the new ES6 features being added.
I haven't really thought about this before, but it's becoming
increasingly difficult for me to come up with a contemporary
simple language. It seems most modern languages are creeping
towards more complexity.
