Stay on the Bus

There may be a perceptual element to this. Zoom out enough to show you are doing rework, and it may count.

Switching languages like Javascript to Rust looks like staking out a new platform, but zooming out it's wrestling with new programming concepts on a theory-building bus. It wasn't necessarily jumping off the Javascript bus to try the Rust bus. You are staying on the same conceptual bus.

Our erstwhile photographer from the article may have tried a new thing the second time but returned to bus #21 with a different perspective. For they were not a renowned expert already to have learned nothing.

In math, it seems like huge wins come from attacking an unsolved problem with topology or geometry. Or analytic versus simulated techniques.

Maybe one takeaway is to do your own thing, and folks will line up to tell you if someone else is already familiar. Then market research counts for nothing, except to refine the idea you first sweat through, even if it's reinvention (consider it "reproducible results" or "nurturing competition").

Also a worry for PhD candidates.