[tbrownaw]

Contrast with a powerful language where you need half an hour of thinking to build an intricate machine in your head, then you write it down in a little code, and need to hold its workings in mind while you test it.

That's not a powerful language, it's a bad language.

A powerful language isn't one that's overly concise to the point of crypticness, it's one that allows you to express yourself naturally. Meaning, there is a clean and strong conceptual mapping between the code and the problem domain. Meaning, it requires less mental effort to use.