A related reading: "Succintness is Power" by Paul Graham. He measures the lenght of program in parse tree elements not in bytes. Not much new information. But here is a nice quote:

I think most hackers know what it means for a language to feel restrictive. What's happening when you feel that? I think it's the same feeling you get when the street you want to take is blocked off, and you have to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. There is something you want to say, and the language won't let you.