> Of course as soon as you say that, some pedantic try-hard with their real name as their hnews handle will swoop in and tell you that time they saved Google by implementing one in production in under 20 minutes.

You say that like it's a bad thing, but isn't it good? If I think that something is of only academic interest, and then I find out about a real-world application, I feel that I have learned something that's worth knowing.