Engineering is most certainly about being better or worse. A key aspect of being an engineer is that you can make conscious trade offs that include time, cost and feasability among others. It's not always a good choice the make the minimal thing that ticks of all the must requirements. In all cases there are unstated requirements that any engineer worth their salty will think and ask about. If you dont the that's how you get angry customers. That's how you get shitty quality bridges and buildings or cost blowouts. That's how you get bug ridden software. That's how you get the windows start menu.

Writers make conscious trade offs between time, cost, feasibility. Are writers language engineers? Literally everybody makes trade offs, that is not a distinguishing aspect.

I am confused how you got to “make the minimal thing that ticks of [sic] all of the must requirements”. I said engineering was about objective guarantees. Requirements are a derivative and means of that.

Making things better, more efficient, cheaper, etc. is not at odds with that. If you guarantee that level of performance and achieve it, then you have produced a acceptable instance meeting your guarantees. If you fail to meet your guarantees, then you have something unacceptable.

Despite the tolerances of a rocket-quality screw being far better than a car-quality screw being far better than a toy-quality screw, a car-quality screw does not get a pass in rockets because it is “better” than a toy-quality screw. It needs to meet the guarantees.

When you would rather have nothing over something that pretends to meet its guarantees, then you are probably in the vicinity of engineering.