Yup. It's the mechanism behind programming as a pop culture. Kids without a lot of experience are sick of the old way because it's too hairy and complicated, th

Yup. It's the mechanism behind programming as a pop culture. Kids without a lot of experience are sick of the old way because it's too hairy and complicated, they come out with a fresh new approach that isn't nearly as broadly applicable, then it gets improved until it's fit for general purpose, at which point it's hairy and complicated and the cycle starts again. I don't think that everything is standing still, though. Usually each successive generation has an edge on the previous one; either the previous generation was constrained by memory or CPU or bandwidth and had self-limiting architecture because of it, or the next generation needs to solve a problem involving an order of magnitude more data or compute and it needs a different approach. But, of course, not everyone (or, realistically, not many people at all) is constrained by the thing that causes the revolution; people usually just get on the bandwagon because you must, if you don't you won't be as employable, won't be as hip, you'll find it harder to employ engineers to work on your project, etc.