You present "programs are graphs" as trivial truth. True trivial truths are, as you pointed out, meaningless. But you leave out degree of applicability - information in the dependence graph differs between programming languages.
Dependencies form a graph, and analyses needed to optimize execution of the program graph differ wildly between languages. Look at ะก++ aliasing rules and C's "restrict" keyword.
One can't escape the dependence graph. But one can execute dependence graph better or worse, depending (pun intended) on the programming language.