Wasn't one of Pike's earliest published whitepapers basically stating that "most of what you need is binary trees, linked lists and hashes" when it came to data

Wasn't one of Pike's earliest published whitepapers basically stating that "most of what you need is binary trees, linked lists and hashes" when it came to data structures/algorithms? (Probably add CSP to that list, given his prior work) So I'd dare to say he's a bit of a minimalist. Fanboys and fellow travelers aside, one of the few persons with a similar point of view that I can think of would be Niklaus Wirth. But that's the luxury that research and academia offer to you, if your problems can be approach from a tabula rasa view, you can tailor your tools to be similary pure (his "pure" obviously not being of the mathematical/functional persuasion). I mean, there's no solid reason why we have several different kinds of screwdrivers. But that doesn't help you when you have to assemble your IKEA Wöbsörwös furniture to earn your living.