[zamadatix]

I'm not sure individual examples is the right way to go about this. A correlation isn't a guarantee for every instance and it's easy to concoct individual examples which tell any story you'd like them to.

To properly answer this you'd need to compare a large number of identical implementations written idiomatically in several languages and see if there is a correlation.

If I were to throw my 2 cents in I'd say "a very weak correlation" is probably right. Not because verbose languages HAVE to result in more bloated code but because it seems to me languages fine having a lot of bloat in the syntax also tend to be languages fine having a lot of bloat in the implementation or attracted to abstraction (which never does seem to actually compile away fully in large projects, even though it often largely does).

[steveklabnik]

Sure, I did not think that one example is a full survey of all possibilities. I think that it's quite intuitive that this feels right:

> it seems to me languages fine having a lot of bloat in the syntax also tend to be languages fine having a lot of bloat in the implementation or attracted to abstraction

Which is why I chose an example of the exact opposite: a language not known for bloat, taking way more code to produce the exact same thing as one that's more succinct.

It's not as good as some sort of scientific survey of a wide variety of options, but if you can find examples in all directions, assuming there's no correlation until proven otherwise is a pretty solid bet, I think.

[zamadatix]

I'm not saying it's not as good as a scientific survey, I'm saying it results in no information at all about the strength of correlation one way or the other.

E.g. one could seek to find a 6' preteen and 6' adult to construct a counterexample to the idea height is in some way correlated with age. Doing so gives just as little evidence of what the strength of correlation is as seeking to find a 5'9" preteen and a 6' adult to show the correlation is positive or seeking to find a 6'1" preteen and a 6'0 adult to show the opposite. I.e. it doesn't follow one can filter the search as they please and then assert that's what the correlation of the unfiltered searches should be assumed to look like. In all 3 cases of positively correlated, negatively correlated, and not correlated we'd expect to be able to construct an example which says whatever we want to say - that isn't the same thing as sampling what the actual correlation usually is.