Design too much, build just enough

"Overengineering is the hallmark of an inexperienced engineer" This is the narrative pushed in computer science classrooms and work places accross the world. The simplest solution is always the best solution. Complicated solutions are bad. I believed it. I sank hours into redesigning systems to make them as simple as possible, desperate to show others that I know what I'm doing, despite being a student. Then spent hours redesigning again once I realised I had gone too far. At the end of the day, I would spend more time redesigning the solution I had already made than implementing it. But conversations with senior engineers during an internship showed me that overengineering can actually be an asset. Maybe it's simply the nature of robotics, but I stopped seeing overengineering as a vice to be squashed and started seeing it as a skill to be embraced. The truth is, simple implementations are better than overengineered ones. Overengineered designs are a great tool to make sure the simple