They're not waves, they're cycles, with each successive generation rediscovering the lessons of the previous generation. I found it particularly amusing to see javascript front-end developers struggle with model/view binding strategies a few years back knowing that all of this was already hashed out by desktop developers in the 90's and terminal interface developers in the 70's. Still, react came out of that, and I don't think the desktop ever had an equivalent to react, at least not in the 90's. So every once in a while a genuinely novel idea pops up, but they're rare.

Citing Alan Kay on the difficulties of keeping up with tech:

We are fortunate that most of what is "new" is more like "particular 'news'" rather than actually "new". From the standpoint of actual categorical change, things have been very slow the last 30 years or so.