> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Not as a whole, but there have been some significant attempts. Maybe the most radical one I can

> Has it ever gone through a simplification cycle in the past? Not as a whole, but there have been some significant attempts. Maybe the most radical one I can think of is Chuck Moore's Forth systems. Every new version is simpler than the previous one. Arthur Whitney has done something similar with APL, A+ and k, constantly trying to remove non-essential features. A more mainstream example is Unix and Plan 9, the 7th version of Unix was simpler than previous ones, and Plan 9 was much simpler than Unix. There are also initiatives like suckless, which try to write simpler software. I am sure there are many more similar examples. Trying to remove bloat and complexity is a very important goal for many developers. Unfortunately, the real world usually gets in the way (colorForth has quite limited hardware support, Plan 9 never included a full-featured web browser, suckless software is not too friendly for novice users...).