> It really was a very simple, well put together language This is the very premise that I question. Simple in comparison to what? Javascript? I'd actually put

> It really was a very simple, well put together language This is the very premise that I question. Simple in comparison to what? Javascript? I'd actually put python and javascript more or less in the same ballpark of complexity (neither of these are simple languages). Look carefully at the design of something like Clojure (which has constraints, eg.: around java interop, of a sort that python did not have), and it's hard to unsee all of core python's accidental complexity.