Rube Goldberg machines (or Heath Robinson contraptions) aren't arbitrary, they're complicated or contrived ways of achieving the process; often a very literal interpretation of how an automatic machine might imitate an otherwise manual action – a robotic hand movement for example. I think it's quite a good analogy, even if agentic Goldberg works well.
Those machines are, to quote Wikipedia, "designed to perform a simple task in a comically overcomplicated way". This implies there is a much simpler way that works just as well.
I don't think the Rube Goldberg analogy works if the agentic meandering is essential complexity required to get at the results. Rube Goldberging it would be something like putting this loop inside some comically overengineered enterprise microservice web which is then found out to be running inside a Window 98 emulator or what have you.
Rube Goldberg machines (or Heath Robinson contraptions) aren't arbitrary, they're complicated or contrived ways of achieving the process; often a very literal interpretation of how an automatic machine might imitate an otherwise manual action – a robotic hand movement for example. I think it's quite a good analogy, even if agentic Goldberg works well.
Those machines are, to quote Wikipedia, "designed to perform a simple task in a comically overcomplicated way". This implies there is a much simpler way that works just as well.
I don't think the Rube Goldberg analogy works if the agentic meandering is essential complexity required to get at the results. Rube Goldberging it would be something like putting this loop inside some comically overengineered enterprise microservice web which is then found out to be running inside a Window 98 emulator or what have you.
> This implies there is a much simpler way that works just as well
Yes there is: Write the code yourself