Edit:

After realizing that I'm rather horrible at explaining things textually, I'm going to eventually make a video that explains what I'm talking about. I'm also going to do all of the research myself and I'll be presenting my final estimate equation in that future video. Thanks for all replies, though. I appreciate you guys taking your time.

Moderators feel free to close/lock this thread.

So, there's already a fair understanding of how efficient a language is machine-wise, but what about the other way around? Have anyone ever tried to make estimate comparisons between languages in terms of how user-friendly they are and thus, how fast a given programmer will be able to produce a given result, compared to another?

A concrete example:

Java Joe is going to write Braid in Java.
Christopher C will write it in C. (omg "will write"? Get it? LOL)
Both have the exact same writing speed, and the only difference is the language that they're writing in and perhaps the estimated amount of writing errors. Whatever IDE they're using, its strengths and weaknesses is ignored for now (because it depends on what IDEs you're using).

Who completes Braid first?

Now, I don't expect anyone to answer that, because it's too specific and may not answer the bigger context. But what I really wanna know is if anyone has ever made some estimates across a long list of coding languages and how efficient each of them are on the human level. For now, let's start with the number of characters written to produce a game.

One reason behind this question is something I heard from John Blow in one of his videos, that he wrote Braid in roughly 90000 lines of code. But how many characters is there in a "line of code"? and how many lines of code would it be if some other language was used (I believe Braid was written in C or C++). Because if I can write Braid in, say, 60k lines of code in Java, then that means that I could add another 30k lines of additional content if 90k lines was the launch goal I wanted to reach.

Another reason for me asking is because I'm making a game in Java and I'm rather surprised at how few lines of code I'm writing to get certain things done, even though I'm creating an engine from scratch (using only the most basic built-in methods etc and no 3rd party APIs, at least for now).

So are anyone here able to point me in the right direction? Thanks.

One reason behind this question is something I heard from John Blow in one of his videos, that he wrote Braid in roughly 90000 lines of code. But how many characters is there in a "line of code"? and how many lines of code would it be if some other language was used (I believe Braid was written in C or C++). Because if I can write Braid in, say, 60k lines of code in Java, then that means that I could add another 30k lines of additional content if 90k lines was the launch goal I wanted to reach.

Especially this :

then that means that I could add another 30k lines of additional content if

Dude you don't have ANY limit on how many lines you can write. Also you are not taking in account how much time you have to spent understanding/writing one line. Those measurements are dumb as hell and totally pointless. + you cant write Braid in java. it wont work on xbox(for example).

And one final thing (obviously my OWN opinion) : I really like Braid and i applaud J. Blow for his huge success, but i think that his ideas for that new programming language sucks.

Game developers usually want to eventually release their games, and not stay in development forever. Writing 100k lines of code takes time.

you cant write Braid in java.

Braid is a game like any other. I can assure you that you can write it in java. But that wasn't the point of my topic.

you cant write Braid in java.

Braid is a game like any other. I can assure you that you can write it in java. But that wasn't the point of my topic.

You're taking my word out of topic.

You've missed :

it wont work on xbox

Anyways, I appreciate the various feedback. For my own plans, I guess this stuff isn't too important after all. But it would've been nice to see some graphs, especially with regards to scripting languages or similar that are more light-weight, compared to the real heavy-weighters. I mean, if I could spend 1 year getting the same result as spending 2 years with another language, that's not negligible.

I'm doing ok with Java though, and for the bigger projects down the line I'm looking into C++.

You've missed :

it wont work on xbox

Then pick any other two languages that work for XBOX and any other game that is possible to make for both XBOX and PC.

My example was incidental.