a note on design vs. elegance

Desig-by-elegance is conservative and suboptimal in its nature; not least because it converges to what we are accustomed to; follows form rather than idea. On the other hand, design-for-performance (in engineering), or design-for-correctness in computer science looks alien at first, but becomes elegant after a few iterations, and doubly so in hindsight; not least because designs which follow do converge to the original one, and we grow accustomed.
-- dexen deVries