Wasn't one of Pike's earliest published whitepapers basically stating that "most of what you need is binary trees, linked lists and hashes" when it came to data structures/algorithms? (Probably add CSP to that list, given his prior work)

So I'd dare to say he's a bit of a minimalist. Fanboys and fellow travelers aside, one of the few persons with a similar point of view that I can think of would be Niklaus Wirth.

But that's the luxury that research and academia offer to you, if your problems can be approach from a tabula rasa view, you can tailor your tools to be similary pure (his "pure" obviously not being of the mathematical/functional persuasion).

I mean, there's no solid reason why we have several different kinds of screwdrivers. But that doesn't help you when you have to assemble your IKEA Wöbsörwös furniture to earn your living.