There is not a great need to minify many languages other than Javascript. The way I see it, the need arose mainly because it took such a long time to agree on a

There is not a great need to minify many languages other than Javascript. The way I see it, the need arose mainly because it took such a long time to agree on a bytecode representation of JS. I would say that Javascript was not at all designed to be delivered the way that it is. The design characteristics of JS that allow minification, I think are just happy coincidence. Consider that Javascript early on was marketed as a companion to Java (applets). Java, of course, used a bytecode representation to deliver programs on the Web from square one. If Javascript had been designed for efficient delivery of "compiled" programs, bytecode would have been the obvious choice. I think my point is, languages are not generally designed to minify well, because minification is the technique of last resort for efficient delivery.