Go is an excellent contrast. Not only is the syntax spartan, but--especially if you include the built-in formatter gofmt--it has a fascist insistence on a uniform coding style. I don't agree with all its stylistic decisions, but I'd rather live with them and have consistency than run into corner cases and gotchas.

I would not consider a 62 pages spec possible to "keep in your head", let alone easily.

The "The Smalltalk Language" section of the last ANSI Smalltalk draft is a more reasonable 28 pages.