> When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at.

Well, of course this is how normal development works. This is the work I am talking about that would _not_ get done because the OP was working on a prototype to solve some _other_ problem.