I think it is a trope that engineering is "black or white".
Having been a professional engineer for 35 years, it is anything BUT. Everything is a threshold for negotiation, there is give and take in every design decision. There is no black-white anywhere I've ever seen, except freshman-year logic texts. Even with digital logic, in reality, there is no such thing as digital: slopes, thresholds, manufacturing variations, it's all analog.
I suspect it comes from when engineers try to problem solve with non-engineers.
At the very least I've been in the room a few times when this happened. The engineer says a few things. The non-engineer suggests something outside their wheel house. The engineer explains why it won't work or would be too expensive to work. Non-engineer accuses engineers of living in a colorless world without imagination.
The black and white thinking accusation is similar to the 50-50 chance of winning the lottery (either you do or you don't). That is, engineers only say if something can work or won't work so they're black and white. It kind of misses the nuance in what's happening.
Exactly. Engineering often involves choosing a solution within some time / cost / performance envelope. I’m inclined to think that if you can’t see where trade-offs might exist, it’s because you don’t fully understand the domain.
Having been a professional engineer for 35 years, it is anything BUT. Everything is a threshold for negotiation, there is give and take in every design decision. There is no black-white anywhere I've ever seen, except freshman-year logic texts. Even with digital logic, in reality, there is no such thing as digital: slopes, thresholds, manufacturing variations, it's all analog.
Where does this notion come from?