It's been hinted at in this subthread a few times, but Rich Hickey's keynote https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ about simple and easy is worth a listen/watch.

I’m not so sure, when I look up the definition of simple it starts with “Easily”. In my native english speaker mind simplicity is a type of easiness.

Though if we want to make the clear distinction, like in the Clojure talk below, for the programming domain that’s fine.

> "Simple" means "not many features", and "easy" means "good to get things done with".

I'm not sure about this. What utility is a language with only simple constructs that is hard to use.

Not quite a counterpoint, but a thought in that direction is:

There can be features that make it easy to implement something which some find hard to understand.

I suppose I question the value of simplicity for it's own sake in a language and would rather defer to how simple and understandable the resulting code is.

I frequently consider the added complexity cost of a more complex compiler inherent complexity because I find the simplicity of use dwarfs compiler simplicity or simplicity "just cuz".

Not much of a difference even among native speakers. If you pose a problem to someone, and they think they have the answer immediately, they're about as likely to say 'that's easy!' as they are to say 'simple!'

"einfach" sounds a bit naughty...