Let's start by assuming that the engineers are at least basically competent, shall we? I mean, I could implement a PID controller without any 74xxx logic at al

Let's start by assuming that the engineers are at least basically competent, shall we? I mean, I could implement a PID controller without any 74xxx logic at all: a basic op-amp, a handful of resistors and capacitors and boom I'm done! But there's a reason that engineering doesn't do that these days and it's not that engineers don't know how. My PID control built from an opamp? In 2021 that's almost always a stupid idea. We use computers because doing it digitally has many advantages. We don't use 74xx (or any other logic family) for this because microcontrollers are far more flexible, allow for behavior changes without reworking hardware, allow inventories to scale (the same component can be used in hundreds of products) and more reasons I won't detail. The reality is that in 2021, often the simplest, most robust and cost-effective way to do something trivial is by using a computer to do it.