Definitely Java has a very similar problem, of having so much rote boilerplate in every single class that its hard to see essential deviations from the pattern

Definitely Java has a very similar problem, of having so much rote boilerplate in every single class that its hard to see essential deviations from the pattern that you need to understand in order to follow the code. I have not ever seen this problem in a Python code base. It is not littered with "if err != nil" for one thing, but Java has exceptions too and still has this problem. I attribute it more to a static type system that lacks features I've grown use to in modern languages. Most of my experience in Java is 1.6 and prior so its possible code bases have improved since then.