I teach Max at a college level currently. The Rube Goldberg machines you speak of result from over engineering and the weird philosophy Cycling 74 has of always

I teach Max at a college level currently. The Rube Goldberg machines you speak of result from over engineering and the weird philosophy Cycling 74 has of always having new versions of Max be backwards compatible. However after you spend a good amount of time you start to be able to avoid these higher-level over engineered mini libraries and be able to use lower level operators to achieve exactly what you want and nothing more. After you build up your own library of modules all is well. But I do agree with your point. I've even been creating my own counters lately because even simple things like the counter "object" in Max are so bloated.