[correct-horse]

| among the engineers there are a significant number of people who believe that's how things should be

There are close to zero people who tend to think like that among actual engineers. That's why we have reliable transportation and bridges and skyscrapers that work for (soon to be) centuries. On the other hand, we have lots of them among self-professed "engineers" who have changed many monikers over the past couple of decades and will probably call themselves "gods" in a few more years down the line.

[drdaeman]

> There are close to zero people who tend to think like that among actual engineers.

Oops. My apologies - I meant exactly that, that a significant number of engineers believe in correctness and sound approaches, but I had a brain fart writing that comment. It should've been "believe in the former".

No idea about how many non-software engineers take various shortcuts, though. But I think there's a non-negligible number of electronics engineers who do so - I'm not an expert in that field, but it's not unheard of skipping coupling capacitors or using a resistor divider instead of a voltage regulator to cut down the costs (because that still works... until it doesn't, of course).

[kelnos]

Don't apologize; GP is being a pedant in order to pick a fight. The "real" definition of "engineer" doesn't matter; your post makes just as much sense if you'd instead used "software developers".

[kelnos]

Can we please instead interpret people's comments in a charitable manner, as we can reasonably assume they were intended, not in the manner that allows us to pick pedantic fights with them?