Seriously, the list can go on and on for days if not weeks. And a personal lesson: I started to learn about deep learning and large-scale machine learning back in 2010 and they started to pick up steams in the bay area. Yet I thought that level of knowledge was "too advanced" for a systems engineer, so I kept deferring diving deep into the area. Boy was I wrong. Hopefully a new generation of engineers would keep their curious eyes more open than me.
You've read a lot into my words that I didn't say, and you're responding awfully callously to lamentation. I am an engineer. I enjoy advancing my craft. I wish I could have stayed curious, instead of burning out running against business management boundaries.
I would certain never say "IBM didn't need algorithms," and it's disingenuous of you to accuse me of such strawman arguments. All I am saying is that there's a lamentably low threshold beyond which we've too few opportunities to implement sophisticated or novel technology.
My God, what does it benefit you to accuse me of eschewing all of "maths"? Absurd.
1) business goals basically never require sophisticated software (I am lamenting this; it's most decision-makers' lack of imagination or understanding of the possibilities) and, consequently,
2) engineers love introducing unneeded complexity, maybe to exercise the mastery that decision-makers stifle in us. (I'm lamenting this, too. It's irritating and wasteful; if we right-sized work to fully exploit our human resources, they wouldn't burn out or implement maladaptive coping strategies like overengineering.)