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I think the EE vs. CS framing is somewhat inflammatory, but the general lesson of not over-complicating designs is a good one.

I’d hardly call it inflammatory. It’s merely a humorous story about over-complication in engineering problems.

Wait... The computer scientist is not an engineer.

Exactly. Use an engineer for an engineering problem.

Mark Twain wrote, "An engineer is a [person] who can do for a dime what any damn fool can do for a dollar." Adjusting for inflation, the engineer can do for a million dollars what any damn fool can do for a billion.

Au contraire, I think it's a parable about software departments being overstaffed and producing churn to fill the hours. See: Uber Engineering, Google rewriting everything all the time, Javascript frameworks of the month^H^H^H^H^H week, etc.

The language and word-choice actually reminded me of Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad, in which Trurl doesn't challenge Klapaucius to building a better toaster, but should have.

Chill out dude, no one's actually going to behead you.