I would boil this down to something else, but possibly related: project requirements are hard. That's it.

> While hardware folks study and learn from the successes and failures of past hardware, software folks do not. People do not regularly pull apart old systems for learning.

For most IT projects, software folks generally can NOT "pull apart" old systems, even if they wanted to.

> Typically, software folks build new and every generation of software developers must relearn the same problems.

Project management has gotten way better today than it was 20 years, so there is definitely some learnings that have been passed on.

A CIO once told me with Agile we didn’t need requirements. He thought my suggestion to document the current system before modifying was a complete waste of time. Instead he made all the developers go through a customer service workshop, how to handle and communicate with customers. Cough cough… most developers do not talk with customers. Instead where we worked developers took orders from product and project people whose titles changed every year but they operated with the mindset of a drill sergeant. My way or the highway.