Of course the point was that one can use simple and crude solutions, or effective and sophisticated ones. Another example would be that in Russian rocket engines pumps tend to be put on the same axis as the turbine, so frequencies of turbine and pumps are the same and some of them can be non-optimal. In American tradition one uses gears, which makes both turbine and pumps (more) optimal, for the cost of gear mechanism. Practice shows that both approaches can work, but, just as with vertical assembly, which requires a tall building or a vertical transportation of a rocket, some ways look simpler than others. Simpler not necessarily better - but in rocket assembly it's probably cheaper to do it horizontally.