I could say the exact same thing about X, A lot of the problems people had with X historically was that developments goal was to "create mechanisms not policy" and people just wanted a desktop environment that worked.

An antidote on non desktop use of X: the other day I wanted to show a program on my phone, there are many good ways to do this, but I picked none of them. Instead I had just installed a terminal on the phone and noticed they had an X11 package, So A few minutes later I was the proud owner of an X server on a phone. And you know what... It was pretty great. My gaming system load and temps dashboard were displaying just fine.

Despite using X for many, many years, I had never just sat down and played with a bare X server, I had only dealt with it through the lens of a locked down, encumbered desktop system. It was like having a network attached monitor. From whatever system I was using as a desktop system I could just go "display this on that monitor", in this case a phone. Based on that experience I put a raspberry pi on my TV running a bare unprotected X server because having a network attached monitor rocks.