The waste of memory is negligible, and honestly not even worth mentioning. The reason is simply, placeholders. The game is in it's design phase (note the beta) and you are essentially playing the development version of the game. Mojang isn't going to sugar coat and hide stuff from the end user at this point. That doesn't make sense until the official releases roll out.
What they are doing is adding things in increments / placing placeholders. Zombie sounding Enderman? Placeholder until the sounds are done. Enderpearls with no use? Placeholder until their function can be ironed out. Useless button on a menu? Placeholder until blah blah blah... Don't forget the XP bar too! That one is particularly important in regards to the fact that the XP bar is causing a problem in SMP. So basically that will be one less bug 1.9 will have as a result. See, a bug has been fixed for the next version because they decided to put it in early.
Plus it gives you a sneak peak into their intentions without having to follow development blogs and reading everything minecraft 24/7. For the longest time slime balls did nothing at all too.
I am sure there are probably other examples too. This is a good thing. A very good thing.
Once they'd made some progress on a world type feature, they said, "We'll never get this done in time to appease the rapid fanbase!" So they didn't spend time removing the bits that they'd already coded so you could have peace of mind
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Explain why Enderpearls are in the game?
It'll be awesome to have world types back in the game.
What they are doing is adding things in increments / placing placeholders. Zombie sounding Enderman? Placeholder until the sounds are done. Enderpearls with no use? Placeholder until their function can be ironed out. Useless button on a menu? Placeholder until blah blah blah... Don't forget the XP bar too! That one is particularly important in regards to the fact that the XP bar is causing a problem in SMP. So basically that will be one less bug 1.9 will have as a result. See, a bug has been fixed for the next version because they decided to put it in early.
Plus it gives you a sneak peak into their intentions without having to follow development blogs and reading everything minecraft 24/7. For the longest time slime balls did nothing at all too.
I am sure there are probably other examples too. This is a good thing. A very good thing.