Work is constant, effort varies (defining effort to be work (useful stuff) plus time wasted to get the work done). By this definition, work will take constant time. He just did a lot of work in one line, so it took quite a while to write that one line.
With different programming languages and different skill levels, you have a different amounts of "wasted time" to do the (constant) useful work.
The person doing the YouTube video wasted almost no time (a couple of typos). If I were to do it, I would have a lot of wasted effort since I never was very good at APL and time has not improved that.
Understood. My comment was an insight that occurred to me as a result of your comment. The insight is that programming "work" is very much like physics "work"
work = effort * distance
In physics, if you don't move something, you have done no work (even though you are sweating and out of breath). In programming, if all you do is write boilerplate stuff, you have not done any work because you have not advanced toward your goal.
With different programming languages and different skill levels, you have a different amounts of "wasted time" to do the (constant) useful work.
The person doing the YouTube video wasted almost no time (a couple of typos). If I were to do it, I would have a lot of wasted effort since I never was very good at APL and time has not improved that.