There are not many languages (in active use) with a small surface area. Go is small, Lua is another. However, a small language does not always mean simple - you may still encounter code that is difficult to unravel.
New programming languages tend to range from medium-to-large in size.
Here are number of keywords in some languages. Note: this is a bit of a blunt measure of a language's size so you may not consider it a measure of small surface area:
Syntax isn't what makes a language easy or hard. In fact more syntactic forms (up to a point) makes a language easier. e.g. ownership and borrow-checking isn't hard to learn in Rust because of the syntax.
A better estimation would be by language concepts, with some being more weighty than others.
New programming languages tend to range from medium-to-large in size.
Here are number of keywords in some languages. Note: this is a bit of a blunt measure of a language's size so you may not consider it a measure of small surface area:
- Lua (21 keywords)
- Go (25 keywords)
- Julia (30+ keywords)
- Python (30+ keywords)
- Javascript (30+ keywords)
- Ruby (40+ keywords)
- Crystal (50+ keywords)
- Rust (50+ keywords)
- Nim (60+ keywords)
- C# (70+ keywords)
- PHP (70+ keywords)
Languages still in development
- Odin (30+ keywords)
- V lang (40+ keywords)
- Zig (40+ keywords)