I agree that the project size (LOC and usage) matters a lot and that small projects could use almost any language. I don't agree that everything i linear. A pro

I agree that the project size (LOC and usage) matters a lot and that small projects could use almost any language. I don't agree that everything i linear. A project with 10 times the LOC is not just 10 times harder to build, it might be anywhere from 20-100 times harder. For example, 10 000 LOC is possible for a developer to read and remember quite well, 100 000 LOC is much harder and takes longer to read. 1 million LOC is probably really, really hard to read and understand (especially when we are talking about old code with a lot of cruft and possibly multiple changes in the design over time). So for a small code base that happens to have millions of users you should probably go for a fast language and take the time to optimize a lot. For a large code base with very few users you should probably use an expressive language and don't care about performance. And then you have all in-betweens which are left as an excercise to the reader ;-)