The growth of language size in the past 30 years is even more stunning when you compare today's C++ to C, or Java to Pascal (or Object Pascal) from 1990. No mo

The growth of language size in the past 30 years is even more stunning when you compare today's C++ to C, or Java to Pascal (or Object Pascal) from 1990. No modern language can be taught in less than a thousand page textbook. And if you include the standard templates and libraries the book size can double again. The evolution of any language inevitably adds reams of extensions, variations, and libraries. This makes the tool not only a lot more heavyweight, but much slower and harder to master, and personally, a lot less fun to use. Give me a tiny simple language (e.g. C) any time over a giant language that requires me to navigate multiple programming paradigms and layers of abstraction (e.g. C++). Modern languages are like having to speak in Latin. You spend all your time trying to please an nazi grammarian, rather than speaking simply and naturally, as the language was originally conceived.