title: Is there a way to measure the complexity of a language?
body: <p>When I embark on learning a new language (like Java) or a system (like git) it would be very helpful to get an idea of the overall size of the mountain I've got to climb.</p>
  
  <p>Is there some way of measuring code in this way?</p>
  
  <p>E.g. you can measure the height of a mountain and the difficulty of the ascent. Is there something similar for code?</p>
  
  <p>UPDATE</p>
  
  <p>This went some way towards answering what I wanted to know: <a href="http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/03/25/programming-languages-ranked-by-expressiveness/" rel="nofollow">http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/03/25/programming-languages-ranked-by-expressiveness/</a> </p>