The basics of drilling, like the basics of writing, don't change much. Drillers poke a hole in the ground, and useful things come out—water, energy or minerals. Likewise, writers put fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper) and, hopefully, useful things come out. Those basic mechanics remain relatively constant, and have since people have sunk wells in the ground or attempted to write the next great novel.
What does change is what goes on around what we do as we go to work at our respective crafts. Advances in drilling technology help us reach water in basalt that hasn't seen daylight since mastodons stomped around North America. We've perfected hydraulic fracturing to the point where vast swaths of the Three Forks and Bakken formations now make the U.S. a player in energy markets. Engineers can drill oil wells on the sea floor, and tunnels under it. Drilling has improved a great deal, even as the basics stay pretty constant.