> by the time the programmer realizes he's in hell, it's too late to fix it.
From what I've seen, it's more that management doesn't want to take resources from fighting fires to move some gasoline. A disciplined group can even take rat's nest code and whip it into shape: but only if management is clueful enough to make that a priority. Usually, they're making decisions on a short-term basis.
Exactly. With proper discipline and true 100% test coverage, dynamic languages work well. But over time, that ideal is a challenge for most software organizations to actually live by. Or that's been my experience... it's one of those theory vs. practice situations.
Virtually all programs start out that way, so dynamic languages feel great.
As they grow, the pain creeps in very slowly. As you said, by the time the programmer realizes he's in hell, it's too late to fix it.