Me too. At this point in my career I've worked very closely with more than 100 programmers for long periods of time, and only one of them would I classify as being overly interested in fads. To the contrary, I give a ton of credit to the vast majority of programmers as always being pragmatic about the problem at hand.
I think the problem lies more in the PR, advocacy and conference circuits where there's an incentive and agenda to present things as silver bullets. It mirrors a greater problem in public discourse that everything has become so polarized that nuanced debate is drowned out by noisy, confident blowhards.
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." (Bertrand Russell)
Back when I was still an employee, I strove to take a more intermediate tact that let me be more vocal about technical direction. What's surprising is how willingly people with authority will listen to what you have to say, once they realize you know what you're doing. I've also been fortunate to have had roles that enabled that in the first place. And now I'm trying my hand at entrepreneurship, which feels practically utopian :)
I think the problem lies more in the PR, advocacy and conference circuits where there's an incentive and agenda to present things as silver bullets. It mirrors a greater problem in public discourse that everything has become so polarized that nuanced debate is drowned out by noisy, confident blowhards.