We all see what we want to see, so I saw that article as reinforcing my belief that it has more to do with the skills/experience of the programmers and the collective intelligence of the trade, in the form of best practices and things like patterns, that any particular language, tool, framework, or the size of one's trade shows. Look at architecture. No, not source code, physical buildings. There are many great wonders throughout the world. All built by different tools, frameworks, and languages, and it didn't much matter what size the builders civilization was. Many people have forgotten what PhDs are all about. It is the study of a field to a point where one contributes to it instead of using it. At that level the fundamentals come full circle. As a beginner you rely on the fundamentals to keep you on track. As you progress you try out this specialty and that specialty. You experiment with exceptions over rules. Then, as you master a trade, you return to fundamentals. You worry about clean lines or beautiful code, language or tools be damned.