Cascading Framework vs ETL tools like Talend
I cant't answer all your question but i can give you my return on experience.With Talend development is most productive than From wark or native language , and source is most easy to maintain because component are optimized and the IDE for your Job is very clear . The debuging features are good , you can do step bu step debugging and you can the your generate sources.
For me the inconvenients are the configuration management , Talend is not very successful to work with many branchs.