Here's something Giles Bowkett brings up that the enterprisey sorts never ponder (their heads might explode):

We talk about some ideas (like mapping and folding) as if they are intrinsically harder to grasp and learn than other ideas (like iteration). But maybe it doesn't require more bits to learn? Maybe map is one point and iteration is one point, even though we want to think that map is twelve points and iteration is two points?

If that's the case, could a language with fewer ideas that can be combined in succinct ways be easier to learn than a language with lots of different weak ideas?

The thing is, for a lot of people C style syntax is what they know, so "of course" Java is simpler. Never mind that it has tons of reserved words, baroque syntax, and a generics implementation that only an architecture astronaut could love - it must be simpler, right?

But what if it's not?

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