The mess of duplicated code is much harder to untangle than de-consolidating code. Especially because subtle differences WILL leak into duplicated code and you

The mess of duplicated code is much harder to untangle than de-consolidating code. Especially because subtle differences WILL leak into duplicated code and you won't know if it's on purpose or not. If a dev can't be bothered to figure out where different pieces of code use a variable and whether the change is appropriate for them, do you think they will have the foresight to search for the duplicated code when they need to change it everywhere? Any decent dev should do both, and the former is a MUCH easier process than the latter. Edit: despite the above, I don't completely disagree with your statement.