What happens is that engineers look at a technology and say, this is too complex, I just need something simple. So they invent and/or adopt something simpler than the popular technology of the day.
But as they build more and more things using the technology, they realize that it needs more features, so those get added on. This happens over and over again to the technology with more and more features being added to it, until a new set of engineers look at it and say this is too complex, I just need something simple...
I did, but the direction is reversed. XKCD talks about how standards multiply and get more complex. This is talking about a different motivator for computing technologies, which is having a leaner, simpler alternative, that eventually gets bloated.
GraphQL saved my ass on a term project that required extensive polling of the GitHub API. Turned a calculated 47 days of calls just under the rate limit into just 12 hours.