Don't get me wrong, I love automated refactoring. It's fun to slice-and-dice a large Java code base using Eclipse, and to leave it tidier than you found it. I l

Don't get me wrong, I love automated refactoring. It's fun to slice-and-dice a large Java code base using Eclipse, and to leave it tidier than you found it. I like the way that basic cleanup operations are fast and safe enough to do while browsing code. But I maintain some large, older Rails projects in Emacs, too. And personally, I'd rather maintain a slightly hackish Rails 2.3 application than a typical Java application. Why? - Rails has rigid conventions for database tables, model classes and controllers. Even in a strange app, the structure is familiar. - The Rails application will generally express the same ideas using far less code. I can dive in, figure out everything that's going on, fix it, and get out. In Java, I often have to dig through various facade classes, gratuitous design patterns, and parallel class hierarchies. Maintenance is cheaper when the fugly evil all fits on one page. - The Rails world is in love with cute libraries that (for example) reduce an entire application's access control to 20 lines of code. Even if I don't know the library, I can learn it, and then I've only got 20 lines of code to think about. Mind you, I keep hearing about fancy new Java frameworks, so I suppose the Java world is getting better. And a truly awful Rails application—especially one without unit tests—can be a Lovecraftian horror. But in the real world of at least semi-competent teams, it's possible to understand both Elicpse+Java and (Rails|Python)+(Emacs|vim|shiny Mac editor), and still choose the later, even if you're a maintenance programmer.