Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like myriads of programmers have done it wrong for decades. Can you elaborate on this and maybe add a few sources?
If you have to change in 5 places to change one "thing", the code is probably not DRY.
drawRectangle("blue", x0, y0, x1, y1);
It seems you removed the duplication but you didn't. Because if you now have the requirement to draw red rectangles instead you surely won't leave it as
def drawBlueRectangle(x0, y0, x1, y1):
drawRectangle("red", x0, y0, x1, y1)
You can argue it's because you named it wrongly, it should be "drawWhateverThingTheyHaveInCommonRectangle" instead, for example drawHighlightingRectangle. And you'll be right.
But you don't know if they will have that thing in common forever. And splitting the code is harder than refactoring it, so it often leads to code like this:
def drawHighlightingRectangle(someDecidingFactor1, someDecidingFactor2, x0, y0, x1, y1):
if someDecidingFactor == something && someDecidingFactor2 != somethingElse:
drawRectangle("red", x0, y0, x1, y1)
elif someDecidingFactor2 == somethingElse:
drawRectangle("blue", x0, y0, x1, y1)
This is obviously oversimplified example, but I've done these exact mistakes several times :)