New applications are exactly why a (non-Turing complete) scripting language was included in the protocol -- so people could extend the Bitcoin to new areas.
You may not like Bitcoin, but calling the use of a feature that was built by the original developer to support one of the earliest aspired uses of Bitcoin "patchwork" is pretty unfounded.
And regarding Stellar, I'm a big fan of the Ripple technology, but very cautious about the entities behind both Ripple and Stellar. Just like Stellar, Ripple started out with promises of distributing the vast majority of the coins around the world, and yet 2-3 years out this still hasn't happened. The fact is -- unlike Bitcoin's -- Stellar's and Ripple's distribution model is highly centralized and thus potentially undependable.
In addition, Graydon Hoare (creator of Rust) has also joined the Stellar team from Mozilla. Now that Stellar supports over 2.3 million wallets, making it the largest implementation of this system, we have found certain scaling limitations of the core tech. Graydon is one of the developers spearheading efforts to make Stellar capable of scaling well beyond its current limitations.
Once these two efforts are complete in a few months, I think you will feel much more comfortable with the robustness of the Stellar protocol.