A different perspective is that there is a vast body of result-of-thought-and-experience associated with developed software. That is then lossily encoded in man

A different perspective is that there is a vast body of result-of-thought-and-experience associated with developed software. That is then lossily encoded in many forms. Memory, judgment, skill, team, contacts, customers, docs, test suite, other assorted software, etc. It's much easier to reimplement a language when you have a great language test suite. Easier to create a product if you already have a close relationship with its customers. Easier to implement something for the 3rd, 4th, 10th time. Etc. And the assorted forms have results they encode well and not so much, and assorted strengths and weaknesses as mechanism. Memories decay, and aren't great for details. Judgment transfers well; leaves. Teams shuffle. Tests become friction. Software works; ossifies. Insightful synthesis around even a single form isn't exactly common. The art of managing test suites for instance. An insightful synthesis of many forms... I've not yet seen.