It is my impression that languages like Python and Java have much more standard conventions and they therefore seem more maintainable.

But neither Python nor Java has interesting standard conventions that prevent interesting maintainability problems!

You can always, always, always look up syntax in a language reference. Always.

You can't always look up why another coder used a particular algorithm or what a poorly-named variable signifies.

It's time to reject the idea that maintainability has anything to do with syntax (spend $40 on a language reference already!) or formatting (use a pretty printer!) and consider that maybe, just maybe, it's all of the creative work of writing programs that can get us into trouble.

Update: TimToady said s/maintainability programs/maintainability problems/.

In reply to Re: Some thoughts around the "is Perl code maintainable" discussion by chromatic
in thread Some thoughts around the "is Perl code maintainable" discussion by oyse

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