I should clarify that when I wrote "speed", in my mind I was thinking of code navigation. I found that tight language integration to the IDE/Editor makes jumpi

I should clarify that when I wrote "speed", in my mind I was thinking of code navigation. I found that tight language integration to the IDE/Editor makes jumping into new code bases in the language much easier. I've found refactoring also becomes easier. So I guess I agree with you that for the very common programming task of "Thinking about the problem" tight language integration doesn't help much. But in order for me to gather data points about the problem, I usually have to jump in and explore the code base, which is where I feel the advantage comes from.