Mathworks has turned the design engineer into an analysis tool expert

Don't get me wrong. I like Mathworks products, specifically MATLAB and the suite of control toolboxes. But for curse of being a super monopoly software is that, in order to make profit to drive software updates (which is now expected to be at least twice a year on most toolboxes), the focus is on the popular user requirements. This is often based on academia and research houses which often doesn't deal with hardware or firmware. In so doing, a large percentage of professional engineers productivity is directly coupled to the level of expertise of the analysis tool rather than the process upon which the product is based.

Consequently, the poorer or bloated the tool, the slower can an engineer develop a product at lower cost. Unfortunately, the reliance on more powerful machines is the way to circumvent to problem. Just run the bloated simulation fast enough that's it's on longer noticeable to the designer. But is that engineering design? Is not the whole point to improve on one's design techniques without being constrained by the tool that computes the design? Is the next generation engineer just a really good user of design tools? Will the fundamentals and assumptions that are embedded in those tools no longer need to understood from first principle?

I'm sorry to say but I see only a viscious cycle of more mediocre designs and products as a consequence on the face of more computing power (contradictory I know...)

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