Disagree. And not based on myth. Based on direct experience over 25 years doing programming. Verbosity -- holding all other things equal -- does equal less productivity.
To put the argument in thumbnail form: it takes about the same amount of time for me to devise a programming design for something in Python as in Java. But to type in, run and test that design? Much less time with Python than Java. The human is the bottleneck at development time, in general, not the computer, not the runtime execution speed. I also only have a finite amount of display screen real estate, so with a more concise language I can "see" more feature points on the screen, all at once, when looking at source code. And since there are less LOC if I ever have to do code surgery or cut-and-paste things around I can do that faster too, in general, with a more concise language. But all arguments aside -- because they are irrelevant in the face of direct experience -- I can say that I now personally avoid choosing Java in all the personal projects I've initiated, and I also bias to advising startups to avoid it (in general) in favor of a lighter language. The issue is more complex when you're dealing with an external client and somebody else's business, however, because sometimes the benefits of Java outweigh it's verbosity -- and there's nothing wrong with choosing it if those factors are critical and pertinent to any particular project.
But when a design is clear, and my implementation choices are clear and fresh in my head, and I know almost exactly what LOC I'm going to write next, then yes I've found that "new line creation speed" does impact the overall time it's going to take to finish a particular feature or change. Years and years of observations backing this up.
