Often when a community gets bigger, the cool &quot;garage band&quot; type of things still happen. Its just that they are drowned by the pop culture in the media. You need to look in specific corners.<p>For programming languages I know the google term &quot;conlangs&quot; and I know that there is a scientific lang development place called &quot;lambda the ultimate&quot;. If you want to see and use the cool stuff, look for that.