[hazelnut-tree]

There are not many languages (in active use) with a small surface area. Go is small, Lua is another. However, a small language does not always mean simple - you may still encounter code that is difficult to unravel.

New programming languages tend to range from medium-to-large in size.

Here are number of keywords in some languages. Note: this is a bit of a blunt measure of a language's size so you may not consider it a measure of small surface area:

- Lua (21 keywords)

- Go (25 keywords)

- Julia (30+ keywords)

- Python (30+ keywords)

- Javascript (30+ keywords)

- Ruby (40+ keywords)

- Crystal (50+ keywords)

- Rust (50+ keywords)

- Nim (60+ keywords)

- C# (70+ keywords)

- PHP (70+ keywords)

Languages still in development

- Odin (30+ keywords)

- V lang (40+ keywords)

- Zig (40+ keywords)

[karmakaze]

Syntax isn't what makes a language easy or hard. In fact more syntactic forms (up to a point) makes a language easier. e.g. ownership and borrow-checking isn't hard to learn in Rust because of the syntax.

A better estimation would be by language concepts, with some being more weighty than others.

[orangetuba]

Thank you so much for taking the time to compile this list! I had no idea C# has so many keywords.