That's a great perspective, but are those peeps writing the unused frameworks just wasting their time to solve a question nobody has asked?
Take the D language, it's basically a poor man's Java, with a shoddy garbage collector and aspirations at being C/C++... Is that the work of heroes or the misguided?
Can't it be both? or none of the above? I don't know anything about D specifically, but effort spent here is likely to be valuable elsewhere. Either because of techniques learned, or approaches validated.
Even if D never catches on, folks will learn from what they've done. And the folks who did it, will likely be able to get jobs in the field. I doubt the effort is truly wasted.
Are they solving a question no one asked, or a question that already has an answer? If there is already a clear answer, then it's probably a waste of time. Your answer needs to be better, and that is rare. When your answer is better, then its a paradigm shift to some. To others the answer is no better, and then it's just the infinite reinvention.
It's even rarer to answer a question that no one has yet asked. Then you are a revolutionary.
I don't even know what to respond to the last assertion, because it's "not even wrong".
Like, just about the only thing D has in common with Java is their shared C syntactic heritage, and an object model with single inheritance. But that also describes numerous other languages.
Precisely both, since no one agrees. At least money can be used as a fitness function sometimes, with games and not with enterprise. The idea is that if D were that much better people would make more money by choosing it over Java.
Take the D language, it's basically a poor man's Java, with a shoddy garbage collector and aspirations at being C/C++... Is that the work of heroes or the misguided?