[dylan604]

Sounds to me a lot like people that have a narrow and shallow level of experience in the field they are diving into, so they keep bumping into the walls.

Dev: I had this great idea of making this new thing because I haven't seen it before

Everyone Else: Yeah, it looks like this or this or even that. Have you looked at what other people have done and the pain points they solve or cause?

Dev: Nah, this is a totally different idea that nobody's done before.

Everyone Else: Oh, okay, you do you then

*I've been that dev (more than once)

[doph]

As a graphics professional who loves node-based workflows, I find the constant re-invention of the wheel pretty painful. With some coordination of this effort, Blender or Natron could be real open-source challengers to Nuke, but starting from scratch seems always to be more enticing.

[themodelplumber]

The reinvention of the wheel with nodes is truly difficult to watch.

There are also very close cousins like Reason and its rack connections, which could contribute some nodes-101-level concepts to most basic graphical node workflows.