> In my mind, biology isn’t even a biology problem as much as it is a particle physics problem.

Emergence is a thing, but 3.7 Billion years of emergent property evolution has created levels of complexity that are far FAR beyond the level of the simple software tools that can mimic the surface level complexity you see in "computer life" simulations.

The computer complexity you're talking about with wonky solutions and poorly documented code are, on average, about 40 years old.

The biological equivalence would be to continue building the same way for about 100,000,000x longer.

I don't dispute the analogy, but it's a bit of Dunning-Kruger, again. The level of complexity isn't going to be obvious to you until you start trying to solve the problems. 3.7 Billion years of wonky solutions layered on top of each other is a lot different than 40 years.