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by unscaled 3219 days ago
Mastering a language is not the same as reading the entire spec, or even internalizing that spec. Scheme or Forth or Io are all probably smaller than Go. Perhaps even smalltalk is (the Smalltalk 80 spec is larger, but contains some of the library, tutorials, examples, and the entire spec for compiler and the VM).

If you really want an extreme example language with the tiniest spec, you can always take Brainfuck. The entire spec probably fits in a few paragraphs, but it's not easy to master.
1 comments
treehau5 3219 days ago
My comment mentioned mainstream languages. To my knowledge, Brainfuck is not a mainstream language used at any small, medium, or large corporation.

The point about the spec was the language is small enough to master.

Scheme (Lisps in general) is different because it is homoionic. Forth is not mainstream, and neither is it's paradigm. And well, I never heard of Io so I will check it out, looks neat.

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stouset 3219 days ago
And your point was refuted. Brainfuck not being mainstream is irrelevant; either a short language spec correlates with speed and easiness of mastery or it doesn't. And the counter-evidence shows that it doesn't.

You can't just casually ignore inconvenient exceptions to your beliefs. I mean, you can, but it's not something that reflects positively.

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