There's a big difference between typing assembler, cobol or whatever; or typing something more modern in terms of what the resulting code does. And also there's

There's a big difference between typing assembler, cobol or whatever; or typing something more modern in terms of what the resulting code does. And also there's a good reason why programmers aren't paid in characters/words/lines/bytes whatever per hour: they are mostly not typing but thinking. The amount of thinking they do is a constant. The amount of typing they do is a constant. But there's a big step change in productivity for the resulting stuff.