It was always an unfinished project because no one gave a flying
No, I didn’t misunderstood, I know it was yet another GNOME unfinished project. Both the native thing and the extensions always had/have the same problems - drag and drop from apps never working properly, the icon grid behaves incorrectly sometimes and other cosmetic glitches.
for anything that was of zero value.
Now this is the thing, desktop icons are basic DE functionality and even Apple - the guys that actually know how to design anything - agree they should be there… at least with an option to turn them ON/OFF. The removal of desktop icons was simply the “GNOME vision” being used as an excuse not the fix something that was hard to fix.