String theory and things similar to it evolved to be as intellectually interesting as possible. Normally you have a mixture of humdrum "experiment theory" and exciting abstractions, but without the humdrum experiments to motivate all the humdrum calculations only the most attractive parts get studied. As a result, string theory is 99% mind-blowing, while the rest of the items on the list are 1% mind-blowing and 99% "numerical simulation of heat transfer in a honeycomb lattice." Nobody would ever write a boring string theory paper because there is no possible motivation for doing so. This is not to say that string theorists are somehow neglecting a duty, just that there is almost certainly a vast mine of untapped results that are not presently being worked on because there is little motivation for them.

One thousands years from now when humanity is building star-bridges out of beyond-standard-model particles, I guarantee that there will be a Journal of Taychon Engineering whose articles never make it on PBS.

Seems to me one solution would be for you and others who think like you to regularly post links on HN to articles on these topics you believe are being unjustly neglected.

... and see them being completely ignored. (That was the whole point, I think.)

Where are the articles on Boyce–Codd normal form, Java bytecode, SOLID etc..

This is still a 'social' network.

I don't think I've heard of BCNF for a while, thanks for the mention. I doubt anyone uses more than 1NF. I've posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19140206

I would be concerned if an engineer I worked with put forward a DB design that wasn’t normalized to 3NF without a really good reason. Designs that are 1NF but not 3NF are generally either hyper-optimized (better have a really good reason) or just bad. It’s not hard to get a DB into 3NF.

I remember having to learn how to normalize my data a lot when I was learning SQL, because the only tools available for use in my environment was a good ole' tool called Microsoft Access & VBA.

String theory is the buzziest of science buzzwords.

It's just the wrong audience altogether.