[TheOtherHobbes]

These projects appeal to those who think everything should look/work like simple code - basically hobby coding/tinkering with a bit of a musical excuse.

It's such a busy space, partly because these projects rarely bring anything new to the table. And if they do you end up with something that takes a long time to learn and has almost as much complexity as a real instrument.

So it's rare for either approach to get traction without some kind of championing by academia or industry.