The whole project of graphic design has the same kind of abyssal qualities as other arts with a technical element - you can always go deeper, more specific. And in a competitive market it's really tempting to sell yourself on one-upping the techniques of others. With a computer in the mix, you can just add specification without end and it will soak everything up like a sponge.
But each layer of that you add gets a little farther away from "creative medium" and a little more towards "bells and whistles production". The essence of it comes from the content, and this is true of everything on the Web too, despite all the interference on and around the platform. So it's more like a case of modern development being "you have to describe the medium you want to work within" because the base layers are this morass of vocabulary that isn't conceptually coherent.