Software is an interesting animal because what PHP and NodeJS have in common is they were created as hobbies, as were a lot of the frameworks and software tech the world relies on. Maybe there is a bit of us software engineers liking the shiny new thing?

There are a lot of dynamics going on. One is programmer's curiosity but then there is a financial incentive to be on the latest tech. If you see React jobs paying more than Angular jobs, it might be a sign to jump ship which has nothing to do with technical merits. Then there is things like Blockchain that excites investors and techies alike, even when it's a useless solution for something.

People sitting in a room deciding the genuine best thing to do is going to be hard with all these dynamics going on.