There is another really nice paper from 2000 by Lutz Prechelt called ”An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl” (http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprt2_advance...)

This paper compared several properties of 80 implementations of a set of requirements. It compared properties such as run time, memory consumption, source text length, time expended developing the solution, comment density, reliability and program structure.

Overall, even though there are some obvious threats to validity, I find this work quite read-worthy.