The author just used Stimulus, not Hotwire - if you add Turbo (the main part of Hotwire) you can remove all the ajax calls. See thread below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26555842 )
Yes, it doesn't use Turbo, but Stimulus is part of Hotwire as well. And actually I do just send a complete HTML over the wire (even if just with AJAX).
Hey, thanks for the article. The goal of Hotwire is to remove Ajax calls and minimize Javascript client coding as much as possible. That starts with Turbo as the foundation and then Stimulus is the next layer up. There's nothing wrong with doing what you did w/ Stimulus, but calling it Hotwire creates unnecessary confusion for those new to Rails+Hotwire. That confusion is what I'm addressing in the grandparent comment.
I included a second example with Turbo Frame, but I am keeping Stimulus since it's what the article is about (and it's in the title). Maybe you can do without it but you have to use some hidden forms or something. I believe Stimulus makes it "clean."
Btw Turbo Stream is kind of cool, but in this particular case, do you think its' really better?