There is undoubtedly specialization, but I also believe in a linear continuum across efficiency. Any programming problem, at some level, ends up including solvi

There is undoubtedly specialization, but I also believe in a linear continuum across efficiency. Any programming problem, at some level, ends up including solving a constraint problem: how do you fit your solution elegantly into an initially unknown problem space? Greater expressive freedom and abstraction are often heralded as wins in programming languages perhaps because they both promote though toward elegant solutions and then provide the structure necessary to easily build them. I think that this kind of test is not so different from testing something like Sapir-Whorf. Does using language X by itself help someone to solve problems more quickly/elegantly/efficiently/effectively? So, instead of considering specialization to be multidimensional and therefore impossible to quantify, I'm thinking of it as something you'd "just" need to control for. Randomization across a large number of programming problems could possibly get a handle on that control.