I read somewhere that WebObjects were in part the inspiration for JEE.

Somehow the OpenStep efforts got sidestep by making Oak into Java and everything else got ramped down.

I wonder how it would have been if Sun had kept with OpenStep instead.

The spirit of this lives here: http://seaside.st/about

And it is an awesome framework.

ReactJs is going the same kind of components based thing these days. Nothing so new, except for where the component is running...

Also of note is that Seaside uses the concept of continuations to manage multi-page flow which is a very fitting abstraction for this problem, and that most languages can't afford to do. That means they can code complex behavior as if the line between client and server did not exist.

Kind of, but in the 3.x series, please note that continuations are now completely optional.

As continuations are quite memory heavy, the new way allows for lighter sessions.