A lot of this stuff is steeped in history. The overhead join which I consider to not always be the best or safest join went back to the days of non radio aircraft when you needed to join overhead to get a view of the runway layouts and signal square.
The same with ATC chatter! Things have moved on from the days when there were limited access to navaids! Now with most aircraft sporting GPS units its more easy to give accurate distance to the threshold so pilots can call their distance out on the centre line.
As they say nothing in aviation changes quickly