I don't think your last paragraph is a fair criticism. That's more or less how PL research is conducted.A feature of a PL is successful if it escapes the lab, n

I don't think your last paragraph is a fair criticism. That's more or less how PL research is conducted.A feature of a PL is successful if it escapes the lab, not if the research language it was implemented in gets popular in industry. The latter is quite rare while the former just takes a long time, which is why industry lags academia so much.