Indeed. The other problem with metallurgy is that it's awfully complicated on all sorts of scales from the atomic to the micron scale.
Most materials and chemicals out there we now have a pretty darn good understanding of, thanks to being able to sit there and simulate the atomic structure of the material in the computer. But metals like steel are far too complicated since you're not just interested in hundreds or thousands of atoms at a time. To understand steel and predict its properties you need to understand all the impurities and the grain boundaries -- these things occur on scales which are far too large for simulation.
So metallurgy remains somewhat like baking a cake. We can bake all sorts of tasty cakes, but there are other cake recipes out there yet to be discovered which might taste even better and we have no idea how to get there from here. (And for this analogy to not completely break down let's just assume that "tastiness" is both objective and measurable even though it isn't...)
No need to assume that! Some people like key lime, some people like pecan -- just like some people like their steel galvanized, and some people like their chrome-nickel-steel.
Most materials and chemicals out there we now have a pretty darn good understanding of, thanks to being able to sit there and simulate the atomic structure of the material in the computer. But metals like steel are far too complicated since you're not just interested in hundreds or thousands of atoms at a time. To understand steel and predict its properties you need to understand all the impurities and the grain boundaries -- these things occur on scales which are far too large for simulation.
So metallurgy remains somewhat like baking a cake. We can bake all sorts of tasty cakes, but there are other cake recipes out there yet to be discovered which might taste even better and we have no idea how to get there from here. (And for this analogy to not completely break down let's just assume that "tastiness" is both objective and measurable even though it isn't...)