The Father of Rails Surrenders: 'We're Done Writing Code by Hand' — a Year After Warning AI Drains Your Fingers
Last year he said writing code with AI made him "feel competence draining out of my fingers." This year he declared his company no longer writes code by hand. Programming's most famous 180-degree turn closed the loop this week.
Three key facts
On September 24, The Verge reported that Ruby on Rails creator and 37signals CTO David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) declared the company is "done writing code by hand," moving fully to an agent-first AI development workflow — hand-writing code now reserved for exceptions like fixing agent malfunctions. His reversal has a full rap sheet: in 2025 he publicly said he didn't use AI because he could "literally feel competence draining out of my fingers."
The fuel for the turnaround is output numbers: DHH claims he wrote 150,000 lines of code in August 2026 alone, against his past average of about 30,000 lines of production Ruby in an entire year. He estimates agents now handle 80–100% of practical coding work, with a programmer's core value shifting to problem discovery, architecture, product design, and final review — what he calls a "super mech suit" that can make the best engineers 1,000 times more effective.
The shipped projects are all heavyweights: the HEY email service is being rebuilt into six agent-written native applications, with the mail server core rewritten in Rust by agents; his Omachi Linux distribution is written entirely by AI agents. But DHH also filed an honest ledger: this spring's Basecamp 5 agent attempts came out "mixed," and the new product Fizzy is still 95% human-written — because unstable AI output can fall below the level of a junior programmer.
Wang Dou's Take
The most valuable thing about DHH's turn isn't the turn itself — it's the brake marks he left behind. Look at the numbers he reported himself: Basecamp 5 "mixed," Fizzy 95% human, AI output "often below a junior programmer." One hand declares no more hand-written code; the other admits the agent's work still needs a human backstop. That's not a face-plant — that's an honest field report. "Done writing by hand" translates to "humans moved from writing code to verifying code." The job didn't vanish; it relocated to a more expensive seat.
150,000 lines against 30,000 — five times the output. But lines of code were never a unit of value; they're a unit of cost. The extra 120,000 lines must be read, reviewed, and maintained; the review burden scales five times right alongside the output. DHH says himself that a programmer's future lies in "taste, business judgment, architecture" — read that backwards and it means: syntax is no longer the threshold; judgment is. The bar didn't disappear; it moved up.
What deserves the closest watch is the HEY experiment: the mail server core rewritten in Rust by agents, six native applications entirely AI-authored — this is using a production service with real users and a real SLA as a test bed, not a demo repo. If it works, "agents can maintain critical infrastructure" graduates from slogan to legal precedent; if it crashes, the whole industry's agent narrative gets recalibrated. The father of Rails has staked his reputation on this experiment — last year he dared to curse AI for hollowing out his fingers, this year he dares to put the blade to a production environment, and both times he dares to say it flat out. The results from someone like that are worth more than a hundred industry reports.
Source: The Verge · Dealroom (talk coverage) · The New Stack · Phemex News