Hello COM, CORBA, RMI, Jini, .NET Remoting, Tcl Agents,..., that is basically what it is.
Won't bother trying going through differences/how-this-is-not-that but I'll say this: This time, it's slightly better, just like every time before.
I'd even go so far as to say this iteration is much better than what came before, and the speed of adoption by multiple language toolchains, platforms, operating systems, browsers proves that.
Zero IDE integration, no right mouse click to generate or consume interfaces/stubs, no debugging tools, no integration with existing toolchains like those alternatives, no wire debugging,....
It feels designed for those that never left the command line, vim and emacs kind of world.
That said, people have worked on IDE integration (it’s not zero, ex. WIT syntax highlighting), there is existing integration with upstream language tool chains, but trying to debate that seems silly. Whether tech is good or worth exploring is not dictated by IDE support, I think!
There has been substantial work on improving debugging, DX and documentation! Hopefully in the LLM age the existing can move even faster