The Fundamental Theorem of Engineering: Everything's a Tradeoff

+1 every action has an up and a down side, you have to pick the action with the most appropriate up-side and the least problematic down-side

This makes sense, especially in light of the established truth of Murphy's Law, which will home in on the worst possible downside.

Good content but wish it was articulated a bit more.

Makes me think of the Seinfeld quip about buying pain relievers, “this one is fast acting, this one is long lasting. Do I want to feel good now or later?”

So it didn't occur to them to buy both, take on of each? Yeah, I've always thought _Seinfeld_ was waay overrated for intelligence.

Engineering is not limited to design optimization.

I propose the following fundamental theorem instead: "Every problem has a solution".

Science: every well-defined problem has a correct solution.

Engineering: every problem has a solution that depends on the resource context and a trade-off between different requirements based on subjective priorities (client, customer, user).