Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at OMeta, it seems to use libcairo and X11. It's hardly fair to _not_ count those lines. Same goes for dedicated languages. If I don't have to count my toolchain, and I'm allowed specialized languages, I can do everything in one line... DoAwesomeStuffJustLikeILikeIt(); Don't get me wrong, there's some cool stuff there - but the claims of 4 orders of magnitude seem exaggerated to me.
Wait, what? OMeta uses libcairo and X11 ?! Where did you see that? The only thing I saw it use is a host programming language (Javascript or Python or Ruby…). You may want to count those lines instead. Anyway, remember that they also claim a full language stack in less than 2000 lines. Including a variant of OMeta. Even Lua is 5 times as big. Not counting GCC. I know it's unbelievable. But other personal experiences…
And, to be clear, I _do_ believe there are substantial savings in program size to be had. (Especially over C++. Chatty little monster ;)
It's the 4 orders of magnitude that make me doubtful. The good thing, AFAIK VPRI is a year or so from completion, so we'll see soon. And even if it's not 4 orders of magnitude, I'm sure there's a lot to learn from it.