I use classic engineering to refer to the (engineering) disciplines where mother nature messes your day up rather than obscene levels of man made (or machine made) pure complexity ruining your day.

It's easy to understand how LLMs got so good at coding, they can rapidly iterate, self test, and it all happens in their digital universe.

These models now starting to spit grey beard knowledge of precision analog electronics, lightweight fastener design, and chemical surfactant systems is something very very recent. A few years ago I think we were pretty confident that the tech would hit a wall at the digital divide. Well, I can tell you now that it did not. It seems it kinda blasted right past it.