Reading the original ethernet paper was one of my favorite moments in college. Just a brilliantly pragmatic design (especially handling packet collisions with randomized retransmissions).
Made me appreciate how important it is for something to be simple and pragmatic, rather than over-engineered to perfection.
I think in part what you are witnessing there is the power of a single well informed individual over a committee, which is how the competition was doing it.
Made me appreciate how important it is for something to be simple and pragmatic, rather than over-engineered to perfection.