And it probably should be. We could even have a set of small plates embedded somewhere for quick swapping on demand.

I like computers, but having an individual computer to run a single drink display really is overkill. At least use one to drive all the labels simultaneously, if you still want the ability to display nifty animations of liquid flowing above the actual liquid actually visibly flowing.

And it still should be.

Cause its stupid. This is even dumber than walgreens replacing freezer doors with LCD screens that don't let you see whats inside.

The difference in what can be done and the amount of work that needs to go into it between discrete digital electronics and just having a microcontroller or even microprocessor there is HUGE.

Also with microcontrollers and microprocessors most of the work moves from Electronics Engineering and circuit-design space to Software Engineering and software development, and the latter experts are easier to find plus the development cycle is way more friendly when it's just code which you can change and upload at will rather than physical circuits were simulation can only go so far before you have to actually create the physical hardware.

Even more entertaining, microcontrollers are so stupidly cheap (the most basic ones cost a few cents) that throwing in a microcontroller is almost always significantly cheaper than doing the control stuff with discrete electronics.

(For example a screen that size can be controlled by as ESP32 which if you embed it in your circuit yourself costs maybe $1 or $2, though that wouldn't be running Linux and programming it be much more low level, plus it's probably the cheapest you can go)

I actually got an EE degree back when we embedded circuits were just starting to be used so I didn't really get taught how to use them, then went for a career in software instead of electronics and came back to digital electronics years later and it's like night and day between the discrete digital electronics age and the everything is a computing device era.