Why 46-Byte Programs and Tiny Languages Are Worth Your Attention
Small Programs and Languages
Tiny programs and small languages have an outsized appeal: a 25-line DOM diffing library, a 46-byte Forth, a 122-line J interpreter, and a Lisp core in 436 bytes. These miniatures aren't just code-golf fun—they prove a concept can fit on a business card and in your head. Forth, Lisp, and Tcl offer huge power from a tiny syntactic core, while David Ungar argues simplicity trumps expressiveness.
It's far better to make a system a little too simple so a person has to write extra stuff, even write it twice with a comment that says, 'Look over here,' than to have a system that acts in strange ways and nobody can understand why. So, simplicity trumps expressiveness.