8/ We misunderstood/misapplied it, and it’s been going on for over a decade. Tbh (which would be a whole blogpost) this architecture (the factory) occurs all over software programs. I could list dozens examples off hand (I have listed a bunch already). It’s largely not interesting to software development as a field. It’s very well understood.
We’ve written software with this kind of architecture for probably at least half a century.