I disagree. At least at the RTL level they're very similar. You don't really deal with physics there, except for timing (which is fairly analogous with software performance things like hard real-time constraints).

> Result is that there is not a 'right' way to do any one thing that everyone can converge on.

Are you trying to say there is in hardware? That must be why we have exactly one branch predictor design, lol

> The first airplane wing looks a whole lot like a wing made today, not because the people that designed it are "real engineers" or any such BS, but because that's what nature allows you to do.

"The first function call looks a whole lot like a function call today..."

> "The first function call looks a whole lot like a function call today..."

Only superficially. What's actually happening varies radically by language. See for instance tail call optimization.

> That must be why we have exactly one branch predictor design, lol

I'll be that 'well akshually' guy. IIRC the AMD and intel implementations are different enough that spectre/meltdown exploits were slightly different on each manufacturers.

Source: wrote exploits.