It's a futile quest to find the perfect programming language. Any language that gains popularity will face a vocal demand for new features at some point. But it

It's a futile quest to find the perfect programming language. Any language that gains popularity will face a vocal demand for new features at some point. But it's not just about adding new concepts. Programmers also want new shortcuts for existing features to save them a few keystrokes. That then entails issuing recommendations on when to use such shortcuts to keep code consistent. There are plenty of small languages, but they lack popularity or rich libraries. The only language I can think of that remains in widespread use and is fairly small in language size is C. I'm strongly in the camp that small languages are preferable to large ones and wish language designers would follow this principle more closely. But small does not necessarily mean more readable. And language syntax design remains a neglected aspect of programming language design.