I think code maintainability has less to do with the language than with the architecture chosen by the developers. Try to explore (save alone, maintain) a comp

I think code maintainability has less to do with the language than with the architecture chosen by the developers. Try to explore (save alone, maintain) a complex Python application like Plone with its multiple inheritance. And then read the code of a modern MVC Rails application. You'll see what I mean. And your statement that Ruby is only marginally more readable than Perl is very surprising. Ruby is a vast improvement in terms of clarity over Perl and is on par with Python there.