Many newer programming languages claim to offer higher productivity than old standbys, but hard data on that productivity can be tough to find. However, a new database of 6,000 projects run by the non-profit ISBSG is allowing researchers to compare programming languages based on hours per function point. It ranks ten principal programming languages as follows:

1. ASP (6.1 hours per function point)
2. Visual Basic (8.5 hours per function point)
3. Java (10.6 hours per function point)
4. SQL (10.8 hours per function point)
5. C++ (12.4 hours per function point)
6. C (13.0 hours per function point)
7. PL/1 (14.2 hours per function point)
8. C# (15.5 hours per function point)
9. COBOL (16.8 hours per function point)
10. ABAP (19.9 hours per function point)

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