You can write code like Hemingway (simple) or like Shakespeare (dense). Hard to say whether one is better than the other without some attempt to quantify and measure things. Seems more like just a preference.
In regard to boilerplate the author brings up an interesting point that with a good language, the boilerplate can effectively disappear once all the code has been written. If people are worried that boilerplate violates DRY, I think they worry too much.
The best way I've found to determine whether a codebase is good or not is to take someone who's never worked with the code before and ask them to fix a bug or make an enhancement. If that's an excruciating task but would have been easy in a greenfield project, the code sucks.
In regard to boilerplate the author brings up an interesting point that with a good language, the boilerplate can effectively disappear once all the code has been written. If people are worried that boilerplate violates DRY, I think they worry too much.
The best way I've found to determine whether a codebase is good or not is to take someone who's never worked with the code before and ask them to fix a bug or make an enhancement. If that's an excruciating task but would have been easy in a greenfield project, the code sucks.