There seems to be no such concept as "good enough."
So this particular quirk of thinking in groups doesn't seem to be confined to the design domain. Nor do "swings of pendulum" preclude the pendulum also having some forward momentum in sum.
Think of it as a skier's waving, or a sailboat crossing against the wind, and the sideways motions is actually required for any forward motion to happen.
Same with beginner/new projects embracing dynamic programming. It’s perfect for a new code add. It bites only later; when the enthusiasm has died off and you got to keep the codebase and tests up to date and things start slipping here and there.
Go is a darling now because it’s constraining. It skipped passed the last three decades of advancement in languages like they never happened. And then as it becomes way more popular people will ask for the same set of features that other languages have had forever.
Things change. Deal with it.
And yet, things don’t have to change at an indigestible rate. Windows, for example, is changing so fast lately, that directions for use change on a semi-annual basis, and self-consistency is almost entirely gone. They never release a finished product, and It creates highly unnecessary cognitive burden.
So someone comes up with a new technology and says "Look! It fixes all the problems of Technology A!" And people who are new enough to the field who pretty much only have experience with Technology A think it's great, because this new thing fixes A's problems.
Meanwhile, though, Technology B has its own host of problems, and oftentimes those kinds of problems are the ones Technology A was originally created to fix! And so the pendulum swings until you get enough years behind you on Technology B where it's problems become apparent enough, so someone comes up with Technology C, which is basically Technology A with more modern trappings.
Whenever you make a technology switch, be very cognizant about what you're losing as well as what you're gaining.
It's human nature to judge by superficial attributes. If you have a perfectly good UI but it never changes, it gives people the feeling that your software is stagnant and out of date.
It's inconvenient for the user, but it catches the user's attention and makes them think about the software. Essentially it boosts brand awareness. It's the same reason that they change the design on a box of granola bars and write "new look, same great taste!" on it.
It also costs engineering / designer labor. And there's a danger of replacing the old design with a newer one that doesn't work as well. The people making these decisions probably know that but think it's worth the cost anyway.
For a moment in time, "good enough" exists. But in a dynamic world we should probably accept that "good enough" is ephemeral.
Change is fun.
Being stuck with the same aesthetics for much longer than 5 years sounds like a special circle of Hell.
I don’t think that concept has had any meaning since the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism is built upon the belief that nothing is ever good enough.
You will never see “good enough” in consumer goods in a capitalistic society.