[wott]

The abstractionists, philosophers, theoreticists, had their days before too (60s-70s Lisp, 70s-80s Logo for teaching children). So in fact the practicalists would only have ruled in and around the 90s.

If we add all the "everything is a XXX" languages (XXX in [list, string, object, function ...]) and gather all simplificationists together, then they almost always were there, with fluctuant success at being prominent.

[p_l]

A lot of those "abstractionists" you mention were very heavily practical, too.

1980s and 1990s gave us "decision made by senior management reading shiny magazine during flight", we just look back with sentiment now combined with survivor bias.