compact

adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be
apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created
from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an
equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality
or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is
more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting
features and cruft that don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme
(thus, some fans of Classic C maintain that ANSI C is no longer compact).
