That would undoubtedly be qualitative, though you're right that it's probably the closest thing to programmer productivity you can measure. I think you're wron

That would undoubtedly be qualitative, though you're right that it's probably the closest thing to programmer productivity you can measure. I think you're wrong that reductionism can't find an interesting gem buried below. Productivity is something difficult to measure because it takes a long time and has a lot of influencing factors, but if you can split it apart just a little bit and lose some of the confounders you might be able to give at least a little quantitative foundation to claims shown anecdotally.