You do have a good point that one should consider not just the code size but the effort to get there (though let's not forget the effort to maintain and extend

You do have a good point that one should consider not just the code size but the effort to get there (though let's not forget the effort to maintain and extend it over time). But are you sure you're framing it correctly? It seems unfair to compare the effort it takes to pioneer a fundamentally new approach to the effort it takes to implement a common one. That's like comparing the guys who have to cut a tunnel through mountain rock to the ones who get to drive through it later. We have no idea how easy it might get to build new systems their way once the relevant techniques were absorbed by industry. The founding project is no basis for predicting that, other than that historically these things get far easier as the consequences are worked out over time. What we do know from general research (at least, I've read this many times - anyone know the source?) is that programmer effort tends to be about the same per line of code. That's one reason everyone always cites for higher-level languages being better. Maybe that result doesn't hold up here, but it seems like a reasonable baseline.