> It's supposed to be both 100% functional and 100% object-oriented (aka having powerful module system) _at the same time_. That is well said, and I agree. An

> It's supposed to be both 100% functional and 100% object-oriented (aka having powerful module system) _at the same time_. That is well said, and I agree. And it certainly is an acomplishment, it's even in some way elegant, but I would not call it "simple". Simple is a compiler book in less than 100 pages that _also_ includes the full source code of a compiler that can compile itself, or a language the syntax graphs of which fit on a single paper page of ordinary size. Odersky saw that to make impact, you need to interact with an existing, large library ecosystem instead of "build it all yourself", so I'd say he is a realist-pragmatist whereas Wirth was a practicising (self-made) idealist-minimalist. I think I will get out my old MODULA-2 book in honour of Wirth again and play with GNU Modula-2 a bit, let's see how that feels after 24 years of C++/Java/Python in-between.