lol what? There are papers on programming languages all the time.
> 1. One is something that has been done many times before and the other an unsolved problem. It doesn't take a genius to see one estimate is likely much stronger than the other.
Building a compiler for a new programming language, building net new code, etc, is all stuff that was unsolved / had not been done before.
> 2. A moderately interesting open research problem is not the same thing as a moderately interesting problem and you seem to be conflating the two.
Feel free to explain the difference, I guess.