Great observation! It feels to me kind of like the 'blub' problem [0], in that these are both cases where technical folks misjudge the utility of something new

Great observation! It feels to me kind of like the 'blub' problem [0], in that these are both cases where technical folks misjudge the utility of something new (to them) because it merely makes it easy to do something, instead of making it possible to do something. And maybe that 'something' they either don't know they want, or don't realize how often they would use it if it were available, or don't appreciate that others want. Edit: It might also be an example of the curse of knowledge: what seems trivial to an expert may be a showstopper for a layperson. An expert suffering the curse would implicitly assume that everyone else has the same knowledge sufficient to make convoluted method seem trivial. [0] http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge