The modern language that comes to mind, is of course, Haskell. And "in between" we have Standard ML. And I think one could argue that the Dylan revival project and Rust are various extensions on the idea of invent(academically)-implement(pragmatically). And the Racket ball is still rolling, of course.
So, I don't think it's right to say that things are all different now. Might be that the maturation of computer science into a "science" field feels a bit like it's taking the joy out of things. But I think if you look at stuff that was published earlier, there's a divide between rather conservative work founded in logic and discrete mathematics, and more exploratory work in what would now be considered "computer science". I'm not convinced all of that would really be considered "published research" though (as in qualifying for a ph.d etc).
It's not like you'd be able to publish a study in medicine on the benefit of washing your hands before you deliver a baby, after you've done an autopsy -- we've already figured out a lot of the elegantly simple stuff.
