It's not true for all languages, but I actually like Erlang's boilerplate. Almost every OTP project has the same structure, and a very close set of primitives that drive the setup and structure of the application. It can be annoying to setup and get right, but its a common set of structure and patterns which make it much easier to dive into a large project.

So for me it is not always bad, just usually, with some specific exemptions that I think are done well.