What was “The Next Big Thing” when you were just starting out in programming?

Question

I'm at the beginning of my career and there are lots of things which are being touted as "The Next Big Thing". For example:

    * Dependency Injection (Spring, etc)
    * MVC (Struts, ASP.NET MVC)
    * ORMs (Linq To SQL, Hibernate)
    * Agile Software Development

These things have probably been around for some time, but I've only just started out. And don't get me wrong, I think these things are great!

So, what was "The Next Big Thing" when you were starting out? When was it? Were people sceptical of it at first? Why? Did you think it would catch on? Did it pan out and become widely accepted/used? If not, why not?

EDIT

It's been nearly a week since I first posted this question and I can safely say that I did not expect such explosive interest. I asked the question so that I could gain a perspective of what kinds of innovations in programming people thought were most important when they were starting out. At the time of writing this I have read ~95% of all answers.

To answer a few questions, the "Next Big Things" I listed are ones that I am currently really excited about and that I had not really been exposed to until I started working. I'm hoping to implement some or all of these in the near future at my current workplace. To many people they are probably old news.

In regards to the "is this a real question" debate, I can see that obviously hasn't been settled yet. I feel bad whenever I read a comment saying that these kinds of questions take away from the real meaning of SO. I'm not wholly convinced that it doesn't. On the other hand, I have seen a lot of comments saying what a great question it is.

Anyway, I have chosen "The Internet!" as my answer to this question. I don't think (in my very humble opinion, and, it seems many SOers opinions) that many things related to programming can compare. Nowadays every business and their dog has a website which can do anything from simply supplying information to purchasing goods halfway around the world to updating your blog. And of course, all these businesses need people like us.

Thanks to everyone for all the great answers!

Comments

OO - there was this C++ stuff coming along, of course you would still need C for 'real' work.
And there were lots of new machines/OSs that were going to finally replace Unix !

Answer 1

The web's only been around a little over 10 years. We've barely scratched the surface of what will exist. The possibilities online are as close to infinite as you can get.

To suggest that everything's been done or that there's too much competition suggests that you need to get off the rutted path and discover something new that needs building.

Answer 2

If one type of business fails, try something else. There's LOTS of money still to be made and almost ANYBODY can do it. I've sent you a sticky, as I'm not sure the link would be allowed here.

Answer 3

It had already been out for a long time, but C++ was still the next big thing, and there were endless debates about C++ being slower than C because it more easily enabled things like object oriented design.

Then later when I hit University the next big thing was Java. And there were endless debates about Java being slower than C++. Apparently everyone's toaster would be running it. Still waiting for that.