Research is by nature high risk/high reward. In most fields, it takes years for research to make it into an actual product. Programming language research does

Research is by nature high risk/high reward. In most fields, it takes years for research to make it into an actual product. Programming language research doesn't stop at developing new languages. Automated testing tools like Microsoft's PEX fall under the same umbrella of formal methods. Even if the research doesn't affect a completely new programming language, it could very likely have a strong hand in updating old ones. See programming language memory models for instance.