I think the hidden message in your comment is "duplication over abstraction" - and I agree! Often duplicating things is preferable to complicated abstractions.
Sandi Metz has a quote that was something like this "We don't tell me developers about avoiding duplication because it's so important, but because it's the only thing they understand".
Duplication is much better than the wrong abstraction
I find functions etc fine. But the problem is a lot of code let's you go absolutely crazy with complex design patterns - and folks who like to be "engineers" and "architects" go totally nuts with these. There was a fad I think around OOP (maybe with Java) which then bled into a lot of places. Yes, you can do crazy stuff, generics, meta programming, reflections etc.
But for example, if go just beefed up the standard library (especially around data structures - give us everything - and common functions there) I think they could have pushed a bit longer in terms of holding off on generics.
