Yes, that is exactly the distinction I'm talking about. And I agree this is something that's pretty difficult to measure, probably impossible to measure precis

Yes, that is exactly the distinction I'm talking about. And I agree this is something that's pretty difficult to measure, probably impossible to measure precisely. I completely agree also that the language can have an impact on the abstractions you choose. Some abstractions are obvious in one language and obscure in another. I wouldn't defend Java against a better example than in the original post, it certainly has its weaknesses. But I find that most examples just show bad Java code, not that Java itself is bad, which is not enlightening and frankly becomes tiresome. On a related note, I think a lot of people underrate the influence of tools on code quality too. They might complain Java IDEs are a crutch that merely let you work around the language's weaknesses. I think they're a lot more than that -- when I start working in a seriously powerful IDE for the first time I was surprised how much it influenced my coding. Powerful automatic refactoring just makes it so trivial to do the Right Thing (give something a better name, factor out a method, etc). Beforehand I would have said that all you need is discipline to create code of the same quality without the IDE. Now I'd say even discipline and good intentions have their limits.