An engineer saying he's having trouble reading the NEC .... why am I not surprised?
Where to begin? Well, I might as well start with the most polite response: Look to the very beginning, to "Article 90." Among other things, that introduction plainly states that you are expected to already know the trade before you start reading the code, that it is not an instruction manual.
That's an engineer's first problem: coming out of school, he hasn't learned squat about actually making things - and we are a construction trade.
Accenting the point, a lot of things in the code make sense only if you look at them in the context of general construction. For example, a lot of the restrictions on the use of Romex (NM) sem arbitrary, unless you already know that the method was originally intended for use in simple wood-framed houses. (To this day, there's no "3-phase" NM).
In a more general way, a lot of the bad prose within the NEC can be laid squarely at the feet of engineers who got involved in writing it - especially in Article 250. If there's anything worse than an engineer, it's an engineer who thinks he's a lawyer. Then, to top it off, much of 250 is based upon theories, models, that have since been discarded. Small wonder there are conflicts and confusions.
Finally, engineers are handicapped by their education. Make the slightest reference to the murkyness of engineering texts, and you're met with some snide remark that "they're not supposed to be novels." That might make the speaker feel proud, but misses the point that the texts often do a poor job of imparting information. Maybe that's why the general public has a greater understanding of the "time machine" in "Back to the Future" than they do of the operations of their local power company.
End result: engineers who are functionally illiterate and technical papers that leave you more confused than you were when you began.
I mean ... how else could the fraud of the AFCI been perpetrated for over a decade, based upon a phenomenon (sustained copper to copper arc at household voltages) that simply cannot happen by the laws of physics? The answer is: a lot of very smart, well meaning folks got baffled and led astray by their good intentions. The very murkiness of the technical material had everyone believing there were 'flux capacitors.'
My advice to budding engineers? Learn construction first, enough to understand what's "normal" and what isn't. Then the code will make much more sense.
