I maintained Perl code for a large bioinformatics department, and let me tell you, I had never seen such a gigantic mess! It's the sort of mess that makes you laugh in disbelief -- like the time last year when my brother's car was covered in bird poop.
I also worked at an internet startup that churned out pristine, manageable code. It was a pleasure to work there. I think the productivity of the programmers at the two companies were about the same.
