Code deletion is much easier when you have a typed language with no meta programming. I guess Go and C code is easier to tree shake like that, than say Python or JS.
Programming languages would make more of a difference if deletes were happening at a more granular level, e.g. deleting unused functions, but this article doesn't touch on that.
C was my main/daily lang by age 18 or 19 and I got drunk on its power
And the preprocessor... dark arts indeed, manipulating the bits of the program itself!
interface Animal {}
class Cat implements Animal {}
class Dog implements Animal {}
Animal[] animals = new Dog[1];
animals[0] = new Cat(); // This will throw an error at runtime