In terms of surface area, I think is hard to beat languages in the Smalltalk family. Smalltalk has only six reserved words: true , false , nil , self , super and thisContext. To emphasize the simplicity, there is even a smalltalk postcard to show the whole syntax fits on it. See https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...

I think this postcard remark may be a bit misleading sometimes, as in practice the complexity is shifted from syntax to the large class library in the system image, that packs a lot of functionality. But yet the environment is sweet and has great discoverability, with functionality like search by example. See https://youtu.be/HOuZyOKa91o

The Smalltalk flavor I strongly recommend is Pharo. There's a MOOC[1] on it, and there are several free books that cover the basics of the language itself[2][3], data visualisation[4] and numeric stuff[5]. [1]. https://mooc.pharo.org/ [2]. https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/PharoByExample9/r... [3]. https://books.pharo.org/deep-into-pharo/ [4]. http://agilevisualization.com/ [5]. https://books.pharo.org/numerical-methods/