Cute, but I don't think it works.

It's similar to saying "terse code is better code". Unfortunately terse, also often leads to "clever". And clever code, as we all know (I hope), is a liability. I'll take verbose and well documented code (speaking of which, you need to strip comments if you want a fair playing field), over "well compressed" code.

Having said that, the less unnecessary ceremony in the language the better. The trick is finding that balance.

Thanks for the feedback. I did strip comments across languages, both block and single-line.

And, yes, it's certainly possible that this isn't a useful metric. I just found it an interesting line of inquisition.

I feel like this idea should be developed more. What are some possible exceptions to this idea? Is there a type of program, that by its very nature, will be a lot more compressible? Are some languages more suited to that type of program, and therefore seem more compressible, but only because the language caters to those certain types of programs or functions?

One thing I'd like to investigate is how compressibility correlates to the author's age or experience. Also how it changes as a project matures.