The language goes out of its way to minimize concepts, the number of ways state can be mutated (eg no thread locals), over-abstraction, and dynamic meta-programming. It emphasizes explicit control flow, preferring code duplication that is easy to read, over minimizing duplication by creating complex abstractions or implicit runtime behavior.

There are a lot of cases where these tradeoffs suck and add a bunch of unnecessary friction. And there are many cases where it boosts overall productivity significantly.