I think the problem is languages are very versatile and there's almost always several ways of doing things, so nailing down what constitutes a fair comparison i

I think the problem is languages are very versatile and there's almost always several ways of doing things, so nailing down what constitutes a fair comparison is always contentious. To use your analogy, I'd saying comparing two languages is more like comparing a woodworking workshop to a metal working workshop. There's a lot of similarities (they both have hammers) and there's a lot of overlap in functionality (you could make a little box in both workshops). But how do you make a sensible comparison between the two shops? Just saying 'you can build this little box slightly faster in the woodworking shop' doesn't really tell you much at all. They're tools that can be applied to a wide range of tasks, and unless you have a specific task you're interested in (e.g. I want to be able to process my log files as quickly as possible) it's hard to make any general statement about one set of tools being better or worse than another.