[jjav]

Sadly yes, it's become a very fashion-driven industry.

Much of it is driven by the near-complete lack of historical knowledge of the field. I advocate that a computer science or software eng curriculum strongly needs a semester or two of the history of the practice. What roads have been taken in the most important areas and examine all the dead ends and why they were abandoned.

So much of the new-shiny is just a badly implemented rehash of ideas that we already know didn't work out in the past, if we only knew. Because we mostly don't, as an industry, it seems like an exciting new idea.