[btilly]

I'm sorry, but both of those studies are a joke. They are taking novices who can't program, and are asking them to perform basic programming tasks in languages that they haven't learned. They are essentially testing how steep the initial learning curve is when you first see a language.

A far more important measure is something like function points per month of developer time. See page 49 of https://www.ifpug.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IYSM.-Thirt... for some data on that. ADA 95 did pretty well, around 11. Perl beat it with 15.

Of course that measure isn't perfect. Excel trounced both with over 30. But Excel is only appropriate for some kinds of projects.