Time-to-market is probably more directly influenced by the familiarity of the developers on the project with the language in question and the ubiquity of stable

Time-to-market is probably more directly influenced by the familiarity of the developers on the project with the language in question and the ubiquity of stable libraries and frameworks and online answers to the typical (and atypical) problems that arise. It just so happens that higher level languages have strengths in these areas because they attract more developers in general (they are easier to learn). Maintainability cost is probably more directly related to how clearly one can express the high level concepts the program must deal with in the language in question. If the concepts are things like manipulating huge arrays of numbers, bit operations, interfacing with the system APIs, or other tasks suited to native langauges, then using a native language may be better. If the concepts are things like manipulating large dynamic data structures like strings and maps, doing a lot of asynchronous operations, and communicating with external services via JSON APIs, then a dynamic high-level language that easily speaks JSON may be better. Development cost is a mix of the above. I think this is a better characterization than "high level languages provide better time-to-market, maintainability, and development cost". For example, while this may be true for some projects, I know of many others where the better time-to-market, maintainability, and development cost comes from using a much lower level language. It's all engineering. Measure. Analyze. Weigh the trade-offs. Make decisions. Monitor.