Code size is also a good (but not great) predictor of development velocity. If you need to write fewer lines of code to do something (assuming standardized form

Code size is also a good (but not great) predictor of development velocity. If you need to write fewer lines of code to do something (assuming standardized formatting so no code golf), it's probably the case that you can write that code faster, and ship features faster. And of course, some languages simply enable to work on such a high level of abstraction that you write much less code (e.g. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html).