In the context of Software development and programming languages, orthogonality means that a small set of primitives can be composed to create complex programs. Generally, more orthogonality means less exceptions and more Simplicity.

Clear is better than clever

Languages like Go and Zig strive for simplicity and orthogonality (although Go has more exceptions than I’d like). Apparently Rust also strived a lot towards keeping a small set of primitives, but lately the language has been getting more and more complex.

References

https://odin-lang.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonality_(programming)
https://journal.infinitenegativeutility.com/the-rust-language-and-special-cases