This was the case back in the days of the Amiga and 68000 Macs. Rendering everything every frame was impossible, the only way to make it work at all was to draw only what was absolutely necessary to depict changes.

Then computers got faster, much much faster. It became possible to redraw the whole UI from state every frame without it being a significant cost.

At the same time retained user interfaces managed to become more and more costly to do just about anything. I don't think for any particular reason other than computers were fast and they didn't need to do much better.

I find it really odd that there are user interfaces that take longer to rearrange their items than it takes for the same CPU to RayTrace a scene covering the same amount of screen area.