No they can't, at least not with the same amount of effort. Of course, you can make everything good by throwing enough time and money on it, but that's not the point.

The issue is that to have a nice and well architected code base, you have to constantly refactor and improve - sometimes you need to re-arrange and refactor huge parts of the code. Without types _and_ tests, this is just not gonna happen. It will be unproductive and scary, so that people will start to stop touching existing code and work their way around it.

> I think the understandability and maintainability of a code base has more to do with the person writing it than the availability of a type system tbh.

That is the same thing. Because someone who wants great maintainability will also want a great type system (amongst other things).

A good carpenter never complains about his tools. He works around their limitations or uses something else.

The quality of the product is down to the skill of the worker either way.

We can assume buffer overflows are less common in Java than in C and I doubt that Java programmers are better craftsmen.

The same with types: they make some kind of errors much less likely though there is no silver bullet in general e.g., I much prefer a general purpose language such as Python for expressing complex requirements in tests over any type system (even if your type system is turing complete and you can express any requirement in it; it doesn't mean it is a good idea)

How often is a carpenter told to use this particular rusty saw or their work won't be compatible with everyone else's?

Everything interlocks in such intricate ways that you can't meaningfully choose your own tools, and working around problems only goes so far. And you can't repair your own tools.

There's also failures of the community to provide good guidance.