I only use the 50T ring on the triple of most of my bike on rare occasions, but when I set up my Trek 614 with proper vintage components with a 14T smallest cog on the freewheel the practicality of having a 52T chainring made itself clear to me.

With a modern cassette and an 11 or 12 tooth cog, on the other hand I really don't need the big ring. In fact, I think I mentioned earlier that my commuter had a triple until recently. Now it has a 39-30 double.

You may be right about "most riders" but for the unmost among us it depends on the terrain. I have compact doubles with 1-1/2 step crossover on most but not all of my bikes. One even has a 53T (though to sure, the difference between a 52T and a 53T is identical to the difference between a 13T and a 13.25T on the rear). My bikes tend to stay on the big ring most of the time, the only exception being the Masi with half-step rings. The binary front shift, which is to say it's either up or down with nothing in between, is trivially easy, no fiddling, no not-quite's, no overshift. For hilly terrain the FD provides a great reactionary range shift. For both commuting and recreational rides I do use the full range of gearing even though I could get by with avoiding the really high numbers.

A FD also allows a greater overall range with less RD chain take-up. By shifting one way in front and the other way in rear you get more gears with minimal change in effective chain length.

That being said, what "kids are into" and what bike shops and co-ops do don't fit my unmost image of best use. When I was doing the car/train/bike commute thing to RI there was one youngster, I figure fresh out of college maybe, who showed up with an interesting Raleigh. I always commented on people's interesting bikes so we spoke about it. He said he planned to have his LBS convert it to a fixie. His attitude said he knew exactly what he wanted and he knew he was right. (Pardon me if I'm being judgmental.) He was commuting a few miles at each end of his commute so his bike would have been perfectly fine for that and for recreational road riding too. Then for a week or two he wasn't on the train. When he finally showed up again he had a different bike. He was apparently recovering from an accident. I asked him about the Raleigh and he said he'd wrecked it when he couldn't stop for a red light. Someone or something had convinced him the full-frontal fixie was the way to go. I believe no-brakes is illegal here so the LBS probably didn't do it for him, though you never know. (His new bike had brakes.)