alt Hacker Newsalso worth noting that hotwire is dead according to DHH in this talk. The rendering html server side is old way now
Replies
rbanffy • today at 7:49 PM
Rendering HTML on the server was kind of how IBM mainframes talked to their 3270 terminals, only that HTML is a lot nicer than 3270 streams and HTTP is human readable.
Server side rendering makes sense for mostly static content, but for web applications, a front end framework and a back-end API are a much better match.
crossthestreams • today at 8:15 PM
Uhh, sounds like you haven't been writing modern React lately, which is server side lol
Where did he say that? I listened to it yesterday and AFAIK he only said "I don't know where the line between native vs web will end up in the future" (now that we can generate native apps easier)
Keep in mind DHH is working on an email app, it makes sense he sees native as the default option for that over pushing everything through the web when the barrier to entry lowered dramatically.
Hotwire is not explicitly a cross-platform concept. It's primarily a way to build web apps in the browser which is not going away any time soon. The only difference is in 2026 you're just more likely to vibecode a native mobile app than build a web/React Native version. Likewise you may build a native Desktop version instead of an Electron wrapper.