The futility of arguing about making good trade-offs

As I'm writing this post, there is a post on Hacker News about over-engineering and another one about code commenting. The common theme: making good trade-offs.

Hasn't being a good engineer always been about making good and relevant trade-offs, and getting better as an engineer means being able to make increasingly good and relevant trade-offs? Aren't making trade-offs always conditional and depends on, to name a few and at the very least, one's own experience, familiarity with a particular code base, team composition, the spread of experience on the team, the amount of resources available, the quality of management, and culture?

If so, isn't it ironic that we are seeing an increasing number of blog posts and videos on this topic created by experienced engineers offering advice on what everyone should do, which other experienced engineers pile on top with more anecdotal superlatives?