While reading Catching the “Network Science Bug”:
It is precisely the need to find “good” configurations under severe resource constraints that separates engineering from other disciplines.
I was reminded of two things:
- Scotty, and
- a discussion that I had years ago with a Navy ship engineer (only we called it old-school hacking)
Managing organized complexity 
Obligatory (on resource constraints):
The keyboard? How quaint.
Interesting read btw :)