I don't understand, are you saying that there are too many languages? I find it very reasonable: - css, js, html are unavoidable for a web app - sql is as standard as it gets for interacting with your database - shell is also widely used as a glue + mini tools/scripts - maven, xml, xsd, xslt are pretty much all xml, and good luck writing a modern java app without touching it - java is the main language in there.

If anything I'm surprised at the small number of languages.

It would be way bigger for the project I'm currently working on at work: we have python for scripting and integration tests, ruby for chef deployment, java as the main language, some shell tools, js/html/css/xml/yml, some legacy groovy, etc..

It's very common to have little scripts and tools hacked together that are rarely used (or even one-offs) making it to the main codebase.

As for the number of lines of code, I don't know how they count libraries and dependencies, but with maven it's very common to be pulling half the universe's libraries through transitive dependencies for parts of the libs that are not even used. It doesn't mean your code is wrong.

It feels like people are just trying to find reasons to criticize that project.