Hindsight is wonderful but we have to remember that tanks were being developed before and during WWII.
Tanks went from really light armored tracked vehicles with itsy bitsy guns to, by mid war, huge 40 ton and greater (churchill, tiger, panther, and maybe even the Shermans) tanks with a single turret and the heaviest frontal armor designers could get. I'd also like to point out that the very advanced german tanks didn't manage any sort of breakthroughs after Kharkov in 1943.
To me it seems all the mid, late, and post-war tanks evolved into remarkably similiar designs. Wide tracks, extremely heavy frontal armor, paper-thin side armor, the biggest diameter turret-ring to hold the biggest gun that could fit. Oh, and one thing more...possibly the most important. Most tanks weigh no more than the weight it would take to collapse a bridge.
I think this is in great contrast to what we saw in the aorospace industry whereby planes took radically different forms from each other.