The document discusses the results of a study that compared programming languages C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a search/string processing program. The study found that Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl programs took about half as long to write and were half as long as equivalent programs in C, C++, and Java. Memory usage of scripting language programs was about twice that of C/C++, and Java was another factor of two higher. Variability between programmers was as large or larger than variability between languages.