On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:19:28 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Cydrome Leader" wrote in message
...

I was just thinking about other things that are just overly complex
for no
reason ...

Have you ever personally participated in the design of new products?

You start by defining the requirements, or rather debating them until
you're too tired to argue, then distribute the work among your
personnel, come up with a separate solution to each requirement,
prototype and test them individually and then together, and finally
try to combine the elements that seem to need no further redesign to
serve multiple functions and reduce tooling, fabrication and assembly
cost while management pesters you to release it to production NOW to
beat the competition to market. They are obsessed with the name
recognition and sales momentum that comes with being first, and know
that the engineers would love to keep playing with it.

All the while realizing that you may be out of a job when it's
complete, unless your performance gets you nominated to the next new
product design team, if there is one.

At the prototype stage having each part serve a single function is an
advantage when it needs to be reworked. Combining and simplifying them
later is time-consuming and non-essential.

Any competent draftsman can design complexity, simplicity requires
inspired genius.

-jsw

Or, as they used to say at GM, "Any damned fool can design a
carburettor for a Rolls-Royce. It takes a genius to design one for a
Chevrolet."

Or the tongue-in-cheek motto applied to Mercedes-Benz: "Never use two
parts to do a job when you can get away with three." g

--
Ed Huntress