Logic behind flashing phones multiple times

[f_hugh]

I'm an embedded developer / engineer of sorts, and I wanted to know why so many people suggest that flashing your phone several times with the same ROM will actually end in a better result... seeing as the microcontroller in the phone technically has a limited number of times that it can be flashed (which is well in excess of 100,000 times, conservatively), the same blocks are being flashed every time by any bootloader or programming algorithm, regardless of how many times the phone is flashed with the same ROM.

That said, is there someone here who has information that is definitively to the contrary from some authority (ARM, HTC, other) who can contradict this?

All I know is that if you flash your phone with a crappy ROM more than once, it'll still be garbage, slow, buggy regardless of how many times you do so, and no number of times flashed will make it other than what it was to begin with.

I won't mention names, but over at XDA there are lots of people who suggest that if the ROM doesn't work 'correctly' after the first flash, that you should flash back to a stock ROM, then to the custom one, etc to attempt to clear the air for the custom one that was crappy the first time.

Thoughts?