I think it boils down to a wider philosophical question that deserves some discussion in software development circles. The question basically is "Should we get obsessed with our constantly evolving tools at the cost of devoting significantly less time to understanding the intrinsic problems we are trying to solve?".
Each time I hear a discussion between programmers, it is always these arguments of whether build tool A is better than build tool B, or whether VCS A suits their workflow better than VCS B, or how cool is the latest language feature. I never see programmers discussing the merits of their solutions, regardless of the language or environment.
We talk about tools all the time because it's fun and it's something we all have in common. Every once in a while something like clang comes along and it can change everything.
What we don't have in common are the exact problems we are trying to solve. That's where design patterns and other higher level concepts become useful. Because the problems and solutions are so context specific, they happen on mailing lists. Tool discussions, on the other hand, are more generic and I think that's why you see them in more places.
Each time I hear a discussion between programmers, it is always these arguments of whether build tool A is better than build tool B, or whether VCS A suits their workflow better than VCS B, or how cool is the latest language feature. I never see programmers discussing the merits of their solutions, regardless of the language or environment.