The "common knowledge" of the IT industry is not a some language or notations, but a logic (not a common logic, but a science) and mathematics.
While considered as "abstract" and "having nothing to do with reality", /proper/ branches of mathematics capture many aspects of programming, so new languages/technologies/whatewer are not perceived as a "reinventing the Foo from the last century", but as a "another appilcation of Bar from the Baz field", which is much more fruitful comparison, due to depth of the mathematics itself.
While considered as "abstract" and "having nothing to do with reality", /proper/ branches of mathematics capture many aspects of programming, so new languages/technologies/whatewer are not perceived as a "reinventing the Foo from the last century", but as a "another appilcation of Bar from the Baz field", which is much more fruitful comparison, due to depth of the mathematics itself.