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this sounds entirely like personal preference based on the projects you’ve worked with. all languages are capable of producing maintainable software. it’s much

this sounds entirely like personal preference based on the projects you’ve worked with. all languages are capable of producing maintainable software. it’s much more about the authors skill than the language itself. yes statically typed languages scale better, but ide support on dynamic languages is still good. i don’t buy the “rust solves all problems” idea. that is the hype curve

tpm 5y ago
For projects with a large number of contributors and long development time there will inevitably be some less maintainable code and that is where the quality of the language itself will become important. No language solves all problems obviously, but clearly some are better than others in nthat regard. I have no experience in Rust but many years with Perl and Java (and others). Perl in the hands of a small, very experienced team had the highest productivity and quality I have seen - but I would not want use Perl in a project with higher developer churn and lots of inexperienced coders.
- athenot 5y ago
  > Perl in the hands of a small, very experienced team had the highest productivity and quality I have seen - but I would not want use Perl in a project with higher developer churn and lots of inexperienced coders. This has been my experience as well. I think that's why "medium powered" languages such as Python and Java tend to get the widest adoption over time. They are less expressive but also have fewer gotchas, and in a team of 100s or 1000s of good-but-not-stellar developers who come and go, they end up being the least painful for the organization.
citrin_ru 5y ago
I agree that it is possible to write maintainable code in any language and it is possible to make a mess in any language too. But some languages to some extent trying to force this, which may move an average project, even if only a little, to more maintainable shape. Examples of such languages are Go and Python: both to some extent enforce code formatting - Python with indentation being part of the syntax, Go with gofmt being almost universally used tool. Both try to maintain one preferred way to do things - opposite to "There's more than one way to do it" in Perl.
oblio 5y ago
In discussions about programming languages, you have to always remember to add "equally"/"to the same degree" to statements such as this one: > all languages are capable of producing maintainable software Once you add that, you understand what the original poster actually meant.

tpm 5y ago

For projects with a large number of contributors and long development time there will inevitably be some less maintainable code and that is where the quality of the language itself will become important. No language solves all problems obviously, but clearly some are better than others in nthat regard. I have no experience in Rust but many years with Perl and Java (and others). Perl in the hands of a small, very experienced team had the highest productivity and quality I have seen - but I would not want use Perl in a project with higher developer churn and lots of inexperienced coders.

athenot 5y ago
> Perl in the hands of a small, very experienced team had the highest productivity and quality I have seen - but I would not want use Perl in a project with higher developer churn and lots of inexperienced coders. This has been my experience as well. I think that's why "medium powered" languages such as Python and Java tend to get the widest adoption over time. They are less expressive but also have fewer gotchas, and in a team of 100s or 1000s of good-but-not-stellar developers who come and go, they end up being the least painful for the organization.

citrin_ru 5y ago

I agree that it is possible to write maintainable code in any language and it is possible to make a mess in any language too. But some languages to some extent trying to force this, which may move an average project, even if only a little, to more maintainable shape. Examples of such languages are Go and Python: both to some extent enforce code formatting - Python with indentation being part of the syntax, Go with gofmt being almost universally used tool. Both try to maintain one preferred way to do things - opposite to "There's more than one way to do it" in Perl.

oblio 5y ago

In discussions about programming languages, you have to always remember to add "equally"/"to the same degree" to statements such as this one: > all languages are capable of producing maintainable software Once you add that, you understand what the original poster actually meant.