I agree 100%, and I always bring it back to one simple observation that has been true of almost all the projects I've worked on: the limiting resource that programmers work with is their own time and brainpower. To my mind, much of the discipline of programming is centered around making frugal use of that scarce resource.
I still think programmers should work with powerful tools, because "dumb" tools often force you to express things in convoluted ways, and you don't need a powerful language to make a huge mess. (Java proves that you only need single inheritance to produce virtually unlimited amounts of spaghettiness in real-world projects. The difference between Java and Scala is not that Scala enables teams to produce epic piles of FP crap, it's that we long ago stopped being shocked when teams produce epic piles of OO crap.)
I think the programmers doing terrible things with Scala would be doing terrible things in any language, given the chance. What they need is hands-on technical management. When they have a wild idea, they need to be walked through an appropriate engineering decision-making process. They need somebody with the authority to tell them, "Ha ha, yeah, that design with etcd and Kafka and the robot space lasers would friggin' rock, how cool would that be, but on the other hand, we could just stick a REST API in front of a database and you'd be done in two weeks, so let's compare pros and cons."
I still think programmers should work with powerful tools, because "dumb" tools often force you to express things in convoluted ways, and you don't need a powerful language to make a huge mess. (Java proves that you only need single inheritance to produce virtually unlimited amounts of spaghettiness in real-world projects. The difference between Java and Scala is not that Scala enables teams to produce epic piles of FP crap, it's that we long ago stopped being shocked when teams produce epic piles of OO crap.)
I think the programmers doing terrible things with Scala would be doing terrible things in any language, given the chance. What they need is hands-on technical management. When they have a wild idea, they need to be walked through an appropriate engineering decision-making process. They need somebody with the authority to tell them, "Ha ha, yeah, that design with etcd and Kafka and the robot space lasers would friggin' rock, how cool would that be, but on the other hand, we could just stick a REST API in front of a database and you'd be done in two weeks, so let's compare pros and cons."