For me the worst was the XML craze. Suddenly everyone was talking about XML as if it was a game changer. One major database vendor announced an XML database. Ne

For me the worst was the XML craze. Suddenly everyone was talking about XML as if it was a game changer. One major database vendor announced an XML database. New standards like XSLT and Xpath proliferated. XHTML seemed to be on the way to replace HTML... When you look at it now, each of these technologies has some use, and the "XML revolution" contributed to some useful developments, but the exaggerations on the way were egregious. What is interesting is that many people were aware of the shortcomings of the new technology from the very beginning. For example, many noted that XML is too verbose for both machine-to-machine communication as well as editing by humans. It's interesting to note the same phenomena in each technology cycle.