Oh I wouldn't ever claim component design is anything but complex. I was just trying to make a distinction between high-level fields and something like embedded

Oh I wouldn't ever claim component design is anything but complex. I was just trying to make a distinction between high-level fields and something like embedded hardware integration where you can treat each component as a "black box" of sorts and just care about I/O and operating characteristics. I don't mean to diminish your colleagues' work, it sounds fascinating.