Hotwire vs Next.js in 2026: Is Server-Centric...

The median mobile webpage ships over 460 KB of JavaScript, according to the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac. That was 2022. It's gotten worse. Meanwhile, David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails and CTO at 37signals, has been waging a very public war against SPA-by-default architecture, championing Hotwire as the antidote. Bold claim. But when you actually compare Hotwire vs Next.js on real metrics — payload size, time to interactive, developer complexity — who wins? I've spent 14 years bui