There is not much point in “being simple”, as essential complexity has to live somewhere. I much prefer that living in some compiler-enforced construct than in hand-written conventions. Go is terrible because it doesn’t let you use the former way at all.

> One, often omitted, property is also simplicity of the language. If the language is straightforward, then there's a much larger audience who can be potential contributors.

With regards to "simplicity" people often seem to confuse syntax vs semantics. They mistake complex semantics for complex syntax. For example people say that Rust has complex syntax, but actually what's happening is that Rust is trying to represent very complex semantics which necessarily results in a complex syntax. This allows more choice for the developer in how things are implemented without extra cost. On the opposite end is python with very simple semantics but is highly opinionated on how things work underneath and thus is inherently incredibly slow for most any serious computation.

I really enjoy Nim for this. It’s also really easy to dive into most any library quickly.

Especially for implementations of cool algorithms where sometimes the only other implementation is a C++ version. There’s a cool sub-ecosystem of people who fiddle with algorithms in Nim. They’re often not even in the package manager, just someone who implemented some paper or whatnot.