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That's essentially what university is. Learning and research for its own sake or for the sake of self-improvement without worrying about applications or real world value.

Best way to learn how to develop good products is to develop products everybody uses.

This option is not open to most people, though, and developing products nobody uses is a significantly better way to learn than not developing products.

So doing exercises that are ineffectual is better than not exercising at all. Got it.

Come on. You can have someone do a great job creating a tool that nobody uses. The experience acquired building that tool is independent of the subsequent market demand.

Except “nobody” here is often millions of people.