In my engineering career I designed a lot of industrial equipment that relied on the NEC. Never saw anything that didn’t make good sense. My retirement BOL needed rewiring (originally built 1946 - they didn’t even run any grounds at all). Despite being so rural that we still have no building codes, I followed the NEC anyway. Cost me nothing to do it right.
Now, if you want to talk about low-flow toilets and Energy-Star dishwashers and laundry machines, I’m ready.
When I was working as an Air Force contractor supporting an upgrade to the E-3 AWACS we had a meeting with about 25-35 people in attendance. We were writing the equipment specification and I asked for help with electrical power interface requirements. No one there was much help. One person figuratively threw a 1,000 page specification at me. Which I could have included by reference, punting the problem to the equipment developer. (Who had a lot of experience on the E-3.) I never felt comfortable specifying something I did not understand.
Low flow toilets. Don’t get me started. Over the last 30 years I have had about seven. They use half the water per flush. The problem is that I never had one that I did not need to flush three times. Some required four. The refill rate was so slow that I have wasted a LOT of time standing and waiting to do the next flush. Oh how I wish I could give the greenies that pushed this a head swirly from flush 1 through flush 4.