Two references and some opinion.
I do not think the issue is confined to software. Claim wording that is broad can make a patent strong, but so can claims that are specific and clear.
For a claim, whether hardware or software or mechanical, to be broad it generally must be expressed in an abstract way. A mechanical claim might say something is "an elongated member" rather than a rod or a post or a 2x4. It might say something is "operativly coupled" to something else rather than connected. In patent claims they mean different things.
Enough of that kind of wording strung together and it can get hard to picture what is being defined. Much of it comes from court cases that turned on a single word or phrase. Does "one" mean "only one" or does it mean "one or more"? A major case went one way and not the other over "heated to" vs "heated at" even though one produced a ridiculous result of the thing catching fire. In another case "a portion of X is covered" was interpreted to not include the case of all of X is covered.
New things like this come up every month and professionals who draft claims need to stay up on it and worry about what words they are writing today will be deemed to mean in ten years.
If you are specific, it is easy for someone to say, "my thing doesn't rotate, it pivots!"
Advice claim writers get is to have broad claims written in an abstract manner (not to be confused with trying to claim subject matter that is abstract in its essence). The broad claims are followed by narrower dependent claims that get more specific. Claim 1 says you have an elongated member and claim 2 says "the thing of claim 1 where the elongated member is a 2x4".
Clarity and narrowness is great if it hits what the infringer is doing on the head. So a combination of claim styles are desirable. There are those who recommend at least one claim that uses non-standard terminology that was not defined in the specification to "give the litigators something that can be argued either way".
So a patent that covers a lot of ground is valuable for broadness but it is more valuable if it also has fall-back claims that are progressively clearer and narrower in the direction of a commercially important embodiment. That is hard to predict at the time it is written.
There is an article about broad vs narrow at the WIPO site here.
Also there are "patent words" that we love to use like: arcuate, frangible, moiety, indicia, and frustrum. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who wrote "all professions are a conspiracy against the laity." And there is some of that.
It is not software but here is an article about the Federal Circuit deciding if a claim wording is indefinite. Indefinite claims are invalid - there is a limit to abstractness.
