Engineer joke; anyone can make a machine that works, it takes an Engineer to make a machine that just barely works...
What many people don't realize is that this is what engineering is all about - designing something to the bare minimum that meets the design criteria.
Many years ago in 3rd year electrical engineering school (I later switched to structural), one of our first lab assignments was to build a simple LRC radio receiver. The prof came by and I asked him why we couldn't do such and such. His reply was embarrassing and one of the best engineering lessons I ever received;
"You have to decide if you want to be an engineer or a physicist. The engineer's job is to design a radio that everyone can afford and that will satisfy the user's requirements. The physicist on a research project may have to build a "one-of a kind" radio for a highly specialized purpose that may cost $10,000, but it can't be mass produced because no one can afford to buy it."When I design a building, I pick the elements that just satisfy the loading requirements - adding additional strength is poor engineering - because engineering is also about economics. Many fools can over-design something that won't fail.
While we marvel at the engineering done by the Roman Empire, most of their structures were over-designed - they outlasted their civilization by a couple of thousand years.
Most of our cameras outlast their usefulness - who wants an 8 MP camera body? Mine works as well as the day I bought it and it's been superseded by four or five newer bodies.
Glenn