This is true both in the academic direction of the study of programming languages, and in the big-money area of software. They both have a certain spirit of pragmatism, of trying to understand what's really needed. There are many smaller details that are more messy than they should have been. I'm still uncertain about the language declaration syntax, where in declarations, syntax is used that mimics the use of the variables being declared. It is one of the things that draws strong criticism, but it has a certain logic to it.
New ideas come as hardware gets faster and cheaper.
I don't think this is really an interesting issue, framed that way. It might remain a useful tool for internal structuring of a system, but doesn't really live on its own. It was also created many years ago and since then the capabilities and requirements of networks, hardware, services and applications have evolved enormously. Recently there is a great deal of concern with the approaching year 2000 and the potential for a melt down of the Internet due to the infamous Y2K bug. Technologically, Limbo is not particularly dependent on Inferno.