The author of this post is trying to emphasize that _language_ simplicity should be near the top of a PL-and-compiler-dude's priority list. I agree with this po

The author of this post is trying to emphasize that _language_ simplicity should be near the top of a PL-and-compiler-dude's priority list. I agree with this point, but I don't think he supports it effectively by confounding it with _implementation_ simplicity. The jewel of the post is: ``With Oberon, Wirth removed features from Modula-2 while making a few careful additions.'' Language simplicity is important. In some cases it's taken too far (e.g., the tiny nearly-self-bootstrapping dialects of Lisp), but a few outliers shouldn't discourage us from removing from our language(s) those non-essential elements of its syntax and semantics.