I'm undecided whether Python/Ruby or Java are simpler.
At least to me dynamic typing seems much simpler than static typing: from a very very pragmatic view that just means no compile-time checks (?), and I'm not that good with Ruby, but I'd consider Pythons type system much simpler than Javas (Python has none of: primitive types, null, arrays, interfaces, visibility (well, there is name mangling for __...), enums, final/abstract, the checked/unchecked mess (look up what the correct way to catch exactly: all checked exceptions is!), casting, generics and everything that comes with it: have a look at the index at the left side of http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/generics/index.h... -- but to be fair Pythons type system has a couple of nontrivial features (metaclasses, multiple inheritance, ...) too)
Python/Ruby have a lot of very useful language features which make the languages much less of a pain to use than Java (the language), but for any meaningful comparison of language complexity you'd surely also have to consider the intricacies of the underlying VMs. The Java VM is quite complex and also quite powerful. For simple programs that don't require high performance or efficient memory management or whatnot that might not matter much though.
[Now, after having written this, I don't think its possible that any of the three languages is strictly simpler than any of the other ones.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_keywords http://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#ide... https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y (grep for reswords)
I'm undecided whether Python/Ruby or Java are simpler.
At least to me dynamic typing seems much simpler than static typing: from a very very pragmatic view that just means no compile-time checks (?), and I'm not that good with Ruby, but I'd consider Pythons type system much simpler than Javas (Python has none of: primitive types, null, arrays, interfaces, visibility (well, there is name mangling for __...), enums, final/abstract, the checked/unchecked mess (look up what the correct way to catch exactly: all checked exceptions is!), casting, generics and everything that comes with it: have a look at the index at the left side of http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/generics/index.h... -- but to be fair Pythons type system has a couple of nontrivial features (metaclasses, multiple inheritance, ...) too)
Python/Ruby have a lot of very useful language features which make the languages much less of a pain to use than Java (the language), but for any meaningful comparison of language complexity you'd surely also have to consider the intricacies of the underlying VMs. The Java VM is quite complex and also quite powerful. For simple programs that don't require high performance or efficient memory management or whatnot that might not matter much though.
[Now, after having written this, I don't think its possible that any of the three languages is strictly simpler than any of the other ones.]