This is only because the electrical and mechanical engineering realms have been resistant to change. There are rapid prototyping techniques that can be used to improve the hardware side, and so much of the latest systems are built largely in software anyway. There are still hardware shops debating whether or not source control is a good idea, "we tried CVS once, it didn't work."

The quality of a system is a direct function of the speed of the testing cycle. To argue "slow, methodical, reasoning" is to argue against quality.