People trained only in computer science look at code and see syntax and semantics only.

But people with even a little bit of background in some of the "softer" toolkits like history or sociology see whole other dimensions to it.

It's sometimes possible to uncover whole socio techno stories and histories just by closely analyzing the code and the commit history.

My good friend Dimitri (who has an excellent blog) can do this better than anyone else I know.

He can look at a repo and tell you the whole history of it, just like a hunter gatherer can look at a single animal's footprint and tell you its whole story.