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Size is not a requirement of a programming language: look at Lisp, Smalltalk, Lua, etc to see simple systems that can be fully comprehended and are quite powerful.

If anything, the monstrosities produced by committees are less powerful and less beautiful. (That we put up with them says more about us.)

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Have you seen the Common Lisp specification?

Common Lisp is big because it's a bridge between MacLisp and InterLisp communities of the 80s. There are much smaller (and just as powerful) Lisps like Scheme or ISLISP.

Scheme is poorly expressive for daily programming and it's because of its small size. The documentation quantity for a useful Scheme like Racket is much larger.

Also, do we count all the pages expended on SRFI's? Or not?

>Have you seen the Common Lisp specification?

Yes, it is huge and gigantic, but worth it's weight in gold. The stuff "just works" and has almost no limits. I'd say that spec is a masterpiece.

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