Pragmatic D Tutorial

[Meta]

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.