Gregory's Server@jrconlin I may be harming myself here, but JSTL (JSP Standard Template Library) was an example, and given what the alternative was at that time, it was kinda refreshing. You only used it to handle view logic, getting "beans" from the "actual business layer code". The "language-as-xml" code was just to render HTML.
The alternative had been a mix of c-line languages hidden in <? ?> tags mixed with HTML. That was a nightmare.
The other was ColdFusion that I think initially lacked the separation view / business layer and that would be a bit more of a nightmare. Once the Enterprise Java spec came with the taglibs, ColdFusion could more or less be written as a JSP taglib, and that is the path it took, and got the same separation possibility. That all got bought by Macromedia or something. The flash people. Evil stuff.
It was not as cool as doing REST calls from the browser and just doing everything in the client, but that was not a thing at that point :P
@lettosprey
Oh, yeah. There's good case for having separation of flows and having business logic apart from display logic (MVC FTW and all)
The horrifying thing was seeing XML programming being used for business logic. And someone trying to work out how to do bit twiddling for network layer stuff by converting to strings and string functions.
I mean, +1 on creativity and thinking outside the box and all, but... <endless screaming into the void>