[muddyrivers]

You can have very messy code with an excellent language. You can also have beautiful code with a poorly designed language. Let's do a thought experiments. Have a pool of SWEs fresh out of school. Divide them into groups. Each group is given a language they are not familiar with. The pool of languages will include both commonly regarded good ones, OK ones, and bad ones. Ask the groups to do a middle-sized project for 3~6 months independently. Then we compile the projects, analyze their code quality. If the pool of SWEs are big enough, it will give us some insights.

[sixstringtheory]

Forget code complexity. Have each team develop the exact same product in their assigned language, measure how long that takes.

Then play musical chairs and have each team develop a new feature in one of the other teams' project/language. Measure how long that takes.