I think it goes deeper. When people become very skilled at programming they have the urge to scratch their own itch, either writing tools to solve software dev

I think it goes deeper. When people become very skilled at programming they have the urge to scratch their own itch, either writing tools to solve software development problems or creating something with a technology that they want to use. They are uninterested in mundane, boring, vertical applications, but that's often where the money is. The guy in the article did some development tools but some other things too. At the end of the day, imagining a market is no substitute for finding one.