[thomascgalvin]

That's certainly fair. I was just talking to someone about how it used to be possible to hold the entire Java ecosystem in your head at once, but that was probably 15 years ago.

On the other hand, adding language complexity can decrease program complexity a great deal. Generics are the prime example of this. If you see List<Foo> and List<Bar>, you know exactly how both work. But if you see FooList and BarList, you might have to stop and worry about how each is individually implemented.

Or the whole "while is spelled for in Go" thing. Sure, they managed to strike out one whole keyword from their language, but anyone coming from another language is going to have a momentary brain skip while they try to figure out why that is, and how they need to re-write their while loop as a for-loop-but-not.

[jimmyed]

I was with you till the List<x>, but writing the while loop as a for loop is controversial. C'mon man. That is second nature for anyone programming for a few weeks.