I added an update mentioning that certain comparisons were probably not valid, otherwise we should all be programming word processing suites in SQL and weather modelling in HTML :)

I also agree with your comment "how a language measures up depends mostly on what you consider important", but I think it's fair to say that the things considered important by both a Ruby and Python developer are very similar (except semi-colons perhaps ;). Or a C programmer and Pascal programmer.

Different languages are "more" supported in certain environments and certain developers are "easier" to hire etc. (the decision points are almost infinite), but where there is a choice, a more developer-efficient language will need less developers to be hired, less time to market and faster features added & bugs fixed.

My feeling is that few considerations outwiegh those ones.

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