"based on subsets of domains that have seen no massive practical use in decades, still being taught because they are the teacher's PHD subject.": This reminds m

"based on subsets of domains that have seen no massive practical use in decades, still being taught because they are the teacher's PHD subject.": This reminds me of my "Informatics II" course in 94 here in Italy. The whole course was about Logic programming and Prolog... a technology that never had a practical use and had already been out of fashion since the collapse of the "5th generation" fad. But it was all my teacher was expert about.