my programmer senses tingle and I find myself wanting to abstract things away - you hit the nail on the head there. What's more, I'm sure there's meaning in those patterns if we could only make them explicit - listening to music is sometimes listening to a conversation in a mostly-foreign language - words here and there that you recognize, you suspect that something meaningful is being communicated, but it's just beyond your grasp.
don't let the text-only nature of Arc discourage you - no chance, I'm too far gone for that.