I think that is, because we are still at the frontier and the lines between research and developing something new are quite blurry.

By now there are already lots of fields in IT that are quite standardized, but others not so much.

For example, what is the fastest way to draw lots of shapes on a canvas on the web?

There is no definite and fixed answer, as the field is still evolving and to find out the fastest way for your use case, you have to do research and experiments.