That's probably a result of Spacechem's history: The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, the game which would become Spacechem, and to an extent Spacechem itself,

That's probably a result of Spacechem's history: The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, the game which would become Spacechem, and to an extent Spacechem itself, focus on programming things to move physical objects. On a related note, thank you, Zach, for only having two mechanisms, using more visual programming, and adding a sync instruction. Until you play CAE, you cannot possibly know how good you've got it.