[preseinger]

YMMV, but "messes" are for me things that manifest in projects spanning both multiple contributors and non-trivial periods of time. And in that framing, in my experience, the most effective individual proxy for "is this project a mess" is whether or not it's implemented in a dynamically typed language. Python, Javascript, Clojure, Ruby, my experience is that they all break down at scale, far more than equivalent projects in statically typed languages.

[dkersten]

I’ve seen what I would consider messes in C++ and Java too, so it’s not exclusive to dynamically typed languages, but I’ve certainly seen enough in Python and Javascript to understand what you’re saying. It’s also a reason why I dream of a Clojure-like language with first class static typing, but, alas…