[unlikelytomato]

"somewhat" easier is debatable.

The bad situations from the costs of duplication are often far worse. If those code paths had slightly different needs, they would diverge. It often feels like 90% of my career has been to take on massive undertakings to learn am entire system to ultimately pick these out after the fact & replace it with something reasonable.

I don't have data to support any absolute claims of what is better vs not. However, every project, team, company, industry that I have worked on has been filling my time with the above scenario. Not sure what universal truth could be pulled from that (if any)