Standards work best when they can take a bunch of existing slightly different implementations and pick the best of them all, with input from people who understand the compromises, and with input from the real world experience of the different ways those compromises work out in the real world.

Atomics could work that way. However many other things cannot - we knew modules were a good idea, but they are a everything on a project must use them before anyone can benefit and so they were forever doomed to not be in widespread use until there is a standard. Even today we see adoption is slow because while there is a standard that works everybody is waiting on some other part to adopt before they can get any benefit. (and those who need to go first see the least benefit), but there are signs that things are moving.