One principle that Niklaus Wirth has always espoused and with which I agree: you cannot reduce the complexity of a programming language by expanding the size of the language with greater features. This sounds like a contradiction, but as Wirth says in the preface to his Oberon programming tutorial:
"The language Oberon emerged from the urge to reduce the complexity of programming languages, of Modula in particular. This effort resulted in a remarkably concise language. The extent of Oberon, the number of its features and constructs, is smaller even than that of Pascal. Yet it is considerably more powerful."
The FreePascal of today has grown considerably over time. The same can be said of many popular languages today: PHP, Ruby, Python, C#, Javascript, etc. Some languages start big from the beginning (e.g. Ada).
With large languages there is also the feeling you've only learned a subset of the language, blissfully unaware of many other features the language offers. At least with smaller languages you have a greater chance to master the language whole.
Of course, it doesn't automatically follow that a smaller language will be simpler or easier to grasp. (There is plenty of argument surrounding Go's supposed simplicity.)
"The language Oberon emerged from the urge to reduce the complexity of programming languages, of Modula in particular. This effort resulted in a remarkably concise language. The extent of Oberon, the number of its features and constructs, is smaller even than that of Pascal. Yet it is considerably more powerful."
The FreePascal of today has grown considerably over time. The same can be said of many popular languages today: PHP, Ruby, Python, C#, Javascript, etc. Some languages start big from the beginning (e.g. Ada).
With large languages there is also the feeling you've only learned a subset of the language, blissfully unaware of many other features the language offers. At least with smaller languages you have a greater chance to master the language whole.
Of course, it doesn't automatically follow that a smaller language will be simpler or easier to grasp. (There is plenty of argument surrounding Go's supposed simplicity.)