A Remarkable Exercise in Programming Prowess

A remarkable exercise: reducing a programming language (Ruby, in this case) to its bare minimum while preserving its expressiveness and power, and demonstrating how that functionality can be derived from lambda functions.

Check it out here, at Programming with Nothing.

Could we see the same thing done in other languages? I imagine it is easier in some and much more difficult in others. For instance, Java is an intuitive language, but can its lambdas, added recently, stand up to the test? Most Java developers rely so heavily on imported libraries (understandably) that its hard to imagine getting much done without them.

Has this already been done? Or are repetitions of this experiment just dying to be performed on new languages? It's exciting....