One of these days perhaps I'll write a meta-pattern on how the software development industry goes through cycles. Every 10 years or so we discard techniques that only gave a 1-2% improvement instead of solving all the problems. We get distracted by a new thing will fix all that. We can't just add to our toolbox, though. First we have to have the ritual sacrifice of blaming all the failures of the previous 10 years on the old techniques, because they didn't solve all the problems.

Oh wait, it's already been written, by Fred Brooks no less. It's called No Silver Bullet.