They're trying to prove a very different point in that study; notably that for developers working on distributed architectures that it's faster to solve most pr

They're trying to prove a very different point in that study; notably that for developers working on distributed architectures that it's faster to solve most problems with Erlang than C++. That's a very different sort of conclusion than saying that the best programmers write the most code. I think the only reasonable metric is someone's portfolio. You wouldn't pick an architect by how many nails they'd used or a musician by how many notes they'd written. You have to look at what they've actually done. And in fact, that's pretty close to what good hiring is about. You then see if real performance matches up to what's in the portfolio.