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Author here.

It wasn't meant to be a knock on Montreal. But on code bases that have very apparent different eras and styles.

The idea actually came from Kate Gregory, in an interview I did with her some time ago, where she talked about some parts of any large C++ code base looking like Old Montreal and some looking like Art Deco or whatever other style.

Edit: Yes, Montréal Effect seems better... changing.

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Lifelong Montréaler here. I think having "problem" in the title is what is ruffling feathers, although I'm not particularly bothered by it. That's perhaps where the analogy is strained the most: stylistic divergence in code can be problematic, but in architecture and urbanism it's typically seen as an asset.

Perhaps calling it the "Montréal effect" would be more apropos?

It's just a low-value analogy. Wikipedia says there's 10,000 cities in the world. Montreal cannot possibly be the exemplar of whatever this post is trying to say.

I suspect part of the problem (and hence friction) is drawing an analogy to something that's actually a strength/net positive in Montréal as a city, but using it to claim a weakness/net negative in programming languages.

Widely homogeneous cities are not necessarily failures, but it's hardly a indicator of somewhere that functions well (as a city).

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