The phrasing "radical idea" was tongue-in-cheek: of course serving HTML over HTTP is the way God intended it. Maybe we have different things in mind when we sa

The phrasing "radical idea" was tongue-in-cheek: of course serving HTML over HTTP is the way God intended it. Maybe we have different things in mind when we say "hydrating", but my understanding is that Hotwire/Turbolinks does not involve any fat JS app with virtual DOM, state management, etc. on the client side. All of that logic remains on the server, and it delivers chunks of HTML (over HTTP or websockets, it doesn't matter conceptually) that replace elements in the page without requiring a full page reload. You get the "feel" of a SPA, without all the headaches that come with it.