There is an important topic missing from the article and conversation: cost and schedule. Efficiency is the real impetus for good engineering design. The aut

There is an important topic missing from the article and conversation: cost and schedule. Efficiency is the real impetus for good engineering design. The author mentions “other engineering disciplines” use design to ensure proper functionality. But design engineering is about spending the least amount of money and time to meet the specified requirements, including production. For example, bridges are designed and built using just the right amount of strength and durability (with a safety factor) with the least amount of effort, and not much more. Software should be designed to meet the bare minimum requirements to be built in the most cost and schedule efficient fashion, and not much more. Standards, languages, API’s, IDE’s, operating systems, databases, etc. should all be chosen to meet the minimum requirements with: 1. the minimum amount of time; 2. the minimum amount of cost; and 3. the maximum amount of flexibility and/or support-ability for future adaptations. …and not much more. This is the goal of good software engineering design.