[pwm]

While I found your article informative and interesting I think it only works in the very specific context of this assignment. Disallowing powerful language features/libraries means it's not a level playing field and thus not a fair comparison. Some languages standard libraries are tiny some are huge. Some languages have lots of advanced features. Eg. GP mentioned GADTs with which one can write type safe/correct by construction ASTs. In other words programs passing specific tests in a specific context does not imply they are comparable in terms of general correctness/robustness/maintainability (as you noted this re caught edge cases).