On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:44:15 -0500, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 03:02:39 -0700, robobass wrote:


The question still stands. When do companies design stuff to be overly

complex. What's the real end goal?

It's often not intentional, just a mindset. I used to design motorized
displays for a toy company. The bases would show the kinetic aspects of
the toys. I would get a proposed design from their engineers, and come
in the next day with revisions that would sometimes halve the cost with
no loss of performance or reliability. I had no real motive to save them
money, I just like simplicity and abhor waste. Most of my suggestions
would be shot down just because they were perceived as cutting corners.

It's not just a mindset. I would love to be able to reliably design
simple solutions to simple problems. I can't, easily. I can COPY
someone's simple solution to a problem, I can, eventually, figure out
simplifications to some complex solution that I (or someone else) has come
up with, but a dirt-simple solution that actually works often evades me.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Really Complex problems out there just
crying out to be solved, and that I can do.

Indeed. Its brain wiring pure and simple..and everyone is wired a bit
differently.

Some of us are very very good at certain aspects...poor at others and
the guy at the next desk is very very good at other certain
aspects..and poor at yours and so on ad infinitum.

Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke