What David Heinemeier Hansson thinks about design
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
David Heinemeier Hansson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
57 dated positions, 2021 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what David Heinemeier Hansson has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsThe revelation I've had working on Omarchy the last three months is that to get that magical 10X, 100X, in a few rare cases, 1000X productivity boost, you have to interact with the agents directly, and you cannot intermediate that bandwidth with another human because it's simply too slow.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 5th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd maybe you won't get to 100% coverage, but this is the old joke about Microsoft Office. "I only use 5%." Yeah, well, we all use a different 5%. Well, what if we all just build our own 5%? What if I just took the functionality that I need and just did that? That is a completely different challenge and one agents are incredibly capable of doing right now, today, and I've done it a lot of times over.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 7th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsI'm not reviewing every pull request anymore. I haven't been reviewing them for quite some time now.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 10th of 41 in this recording
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Our reading · no longer heldThe ideas in software originate with humans; agents build what people tell them to build.
Recalls holdingI thought all the ideas would originate with the humans. They would tell their agents what to build, and off they went.
SaidI don't think that's true anymore at all.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 11th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd vibe coding, if we define it here, is you tell an agent to build software for you. You do not look at the implementation. That, to me, is what separates vibe coding from programming or, let's say, agent-accelerated development.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 12th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsI think you're gonna have a hard time coping with the new reality if the only thing you loved about programming was the mechanical bits of putting the right logical constructs together to produce something other people told you to produce. Because that mechanical process is under threat. If you are, as you just mentioned, excited about building things, I don't think you're under threat at all.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 17th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsIt is an infuriatingly locked-down computer. Now, to Apple's credit, it's a pretty good computer for being locked down, but I don't want a locked-down computer. I wanna own my computer. Better yet, I wanna mutate my computer, and this is where the agentic age needs a new operating system. When you can vibe code whatever app comes to your mind, you should be able to vibe code your operating system.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 21st of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd I will say I've actually changed my mind on that a little bit. I spent quite a lot of time speaking the other book that there are a lot of people who don't actually need those ambitions. And I also-- That's also true. We don't want 8 billion Elons running around the world. Would be rather crazy, I think. But I've come to realize that for entrepreneurs, it's healthy to have suitable chunky goals.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 22nd of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsWhy are we surprised? Even if you're a good programmer, if you finish a job and you ask your also very good peer to review it, you're gonna end up with better code. Of course you're gonna end up with better code. So build that into your process.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 25th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsI'm excited about a lot of things. I love building things, and I love hobbies, and I love all sorts of stuff. But creating life with another human that you love is literally the peak experience of being on the planet.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 28th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsThe world would be so fucking boring if we constantly sought 100% compatibility in our opinions and in our politics. And when it comes to my code generator, which is what Claude is, I don't need it to share all my politics.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 30th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsLinux conquered everything else. All the AI infrastructure that everyone runs off, it's all running on Linux. All the systems, all the servers, everything is Linux. So it was kind of a curiosity that the desktop and the personal computers we were using really hadn't been captured, but clearly it was just waiting for this moment. Linux spent the time from '91 to now waiting for agents to fully flourish as an end user operating system.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 32nd of 41 in this recording
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsI don't require anyone to be as excited about AI or agents as I am. It's completely fine. But we also need someone in this camp in this Linux camp who are really excited about AI, who really leaning in with agents.
↗Is Linux the perfect operating system? - Omarchy interview with DHHyoutube.com 3rd of 6 in this recording
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Their wordsThis is a computer system made for pros, and I mean that in the sense of professional computer lovers. People who are willing to invest time and energy into learning how their system works, and reap the benefits that come from that investment.
↗Is Linux the perfect operating system? - Omarchy interview with DHHyoutube.com 4th of 6 in this recording
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsSo, this is why I'm quite skeptical about all this new AI acceleration we're having is even us, I think it's quite likely that we could use it wrong to build too much software, to get too far away from less software, learnable software. It still has to fit in the mind of a human.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 2nd of 15 in this recording
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Their wordsThis was one of the reasons why I was always so skeptical about venture capital when it came to software. Because I saw time and again people raise an enormous amount of money, hire hundreds of people, and produce crap software.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 3rd of 15 in this recording
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Their wordsAll the best ideas that actually turn out to have an impact on something, they sound stupid at first. They're not intuitive because that's where all the value has been locked up.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 9th of 15 in this recording
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Their wordsWhat's broken now on the social platforms is that my followers don't see anything I post unless it goes medium viral. Because everyone is now in the algorithmic feed.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 10th of 15 in this recording
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Their wordsBut I've also realized at some point when I retire, it will actually be a retirement from capitalism. It'll be a retirement from customers and the economic exchange.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 12th of 15 in this recording
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAgents aren't perfect, slop is a problem, but giving more people the power to enjoy malleable computers is undoubtedly a huge win for the founding vision of open source.
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsI think in some ways Ruby Rails is having a little bit of a renaissance now that it is one of the most token efficient ways of building web apps. It's ideally suited for the agent workflows we're dealing with now. We'll see how long that lasts.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 1st of 20 in this recording
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Their wordsanyone who's working with the web, who's working with Ruby, who's doing DevOps, they should be on Linux because first of all, that's closer to what we deploy.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 2nd of 20 in this recording
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Their wordsDesigners at 37 Signals are not just here to make a spec look pretty. They're here to find what the spec should be. They're product managers in many ways.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 4th of 20 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd that seems like the end state. The end state is that agents will not need any of our accommodations. They do not need any on-ramp.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 10th of 20 in this recording
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Their wordsthe most successful and applicable agent acceleration that I've seen at 37 signal has been from the most senior people the people who are able to validate whether what the agent produces is suitable to be deployed to millions of people.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 11th of 20 in this recording
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Their wordsNow one way it could map out is that the agents will get so good that they stop making mistakes. They become senior in their capacity to ship working code. This is what my bet would be if we look x amount of time forward because this is what just happened with cars.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 12th of 20 in this recording
- 7 months earlier
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Their wordsIt's crazy that it took me more than thirty years to realize this, but while I spent time in Apple's walled garden, the free software alternative simply grew better, stronger, and faster. The Linux of 2025 is not the Linux of the 90s or the 00s or even the 10s. It's shockingly more polished, capable, and beautiful.
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsOf course, Linux isn't for everyone. It's still an adventure! An awesome, teach-you-about-computers adventure, but not everyone is into computer adventures. Plenty of people are content with a computer appliance where they never have to look under the hood.
- 5 days earlier
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Our readingAn executive's empty calendar is a feature, not laziness: availability is what the job requires.
Their wordsWide open calendars should not be seen as lazy, but as intentional availability.
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsPython, to me, I hope I don't offend people too much. I've said this before, it's ugly. And it's ugly in its space, because it's full of superfluous instructions that are necessary for legacy reasons of when Guido made Python back in '87 that are still here in 2025.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 2nd of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsMatz went the completely opposite direction. He believes in humanity. He believes in the unlimited capacity of programmers to learn and become better. So much so that he's willing to put the stranger at his own level.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 3rd of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsI make sure that when I release the first version of any new thing I work on, it's a little broken. It's a little busted in ways that invite people to come in and help me. Because there's no easier way to get the collaboration of other programmers than to put something out that they know how to fix and improve.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 4th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsThey're still stuck in, essentially, I like static typing. Therefore, static typing is the only way to create reliable correct systems, which is just such a mind blowing, to be blunt, idiotic thing to say in the face of evidence, mountains of evidence to the contrary.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 6th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsRuby is a luxury language. It's a luxury, the highest luxury in my opinion. It is the Coco Chanel of programming languages. Something that not everyone can afford. And I mean this in the best possible way.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 8th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsIt may no longer have as much economic value as it once did. I think that I'm quite convinced is true that we perhaps have seen the peak.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 12th of 36 in this recording
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Our reading · no longer heldThe Rails doctrine's 'progress over stability' is the one point that dated: churn is not progress, and stability turned out to be worth more.
Recalls holdingI used to think it required more churn to get progress to stay on the leading edge of new stuff. And I wrote this before I experienced the indignity of the 2010s in the JavaScript community.
SaidAnd if I was gonna write the doctrine today, I'd write that differently. I wouldn't say progress over stability.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 18th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsYou cannot produce the kind of software that Basecamp is with a team of a thousand people. You will build the kind of software that a thousand people builds. And that's not the same thing at all.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 20th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsour default team size is two. One programmer, one designer, one feature. When you're operating at that level of scale, you don't need sophistication. You don't need advanced methodologies.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 21st of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsI know this from experience because I've been trying to build a lot of other businesses since. And some of them have been moderate successes, even good successes, none of them have been Basecamp. It's really difficult to do that twice.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 25th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsNow my next kind of tingle is that if you could move out of the cloud, can you also move out of the data center? Personal servers have gotten really scarily quick and efficient and personal internet connections rival what we connected data centers with just a decade or two ago.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 28th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsI think part of the secret there is that Elon actually knows things. And when you know things, you can evaluate the quality of work products. And when you can evaluate the quality of work products, you can very quickly tell who's full of shit and who will actually take you to Mars.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 29th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsBut I have come to realize that as a web developer, Linux is just better. Linux is just better. It's closer to what I deploy on. The tooling is actually phenomenal.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 39th of 36 in this recording
- 11 days earlier
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Their wordsI think perhaps to some extent this has been a weakness of Linux because someone can look at that and go like oh that's kind of the same as what I'm already using. Why would I go through all the trouble to end up with something that's very similar?
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 1st of 9 in this recording
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Their wordsSo, it shouldn't really startle me or surprise me that Linux is able to create a not just competitive but superior desktop experience to something like the Mac in a whole host of areas. Not in all of them.
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 2nd of 9 in this recording
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Their wordsIf that fully vertically integrated system suddenly is run by people with not quite as much taste as Steve Jobs with not quite as in tune sensibilities about everything from marketing to the vision of computing but instead by a logistics guy.
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 3rd of 9 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd if there's a one thread that goes through my entire career, it's just an absolute loathing of asking anyone for permission about anything.
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 5th of 9 in this recording
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsI don't know when we'll literally get "The Year of Linux on the Desktop", but I've never been as convinced that its coming as I am now. There's enough dissent in the water. Enough dissatisfaction with both Apple and Microsoft.
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsA quarter of Omakub is trying to work around the fact that helpful tools like Alacritty or LazyGit or whatever rarely have official packages for Ubuntu, so you're left doing a lot of manual scripting to get everything a developer would want from a modern Linux setup. Not so with the AUR!
↗Omarchy: Bottling that inspiration before it spoilsworld.hey.com
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Their wordsSo while the downside of Arch + Hyprland is that literally every last detail requires you to make a choice and a config file to move on, it's also its upside: you can change EVERYTHING!
↗Omarchy: Bottling that inspiration before it spoilsworld.hey.com
- 8 months earlier
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Their wordsit's a luxury good like you're not paying the penalty for that the people who embrace it and think that they can just ask AI for everything or they can just look everything up but they don't have to understand the copy pasta that they slam into their project they're the ones who going to suffer
↗DHH Is Right About Everythingyoutube.com 1st of 8 in this recording
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Their wordsyou have all these little files that get to live forever because the vast majority of your code does does not churn all the time when you have one bundle the entire bundle turns over every single time you change a goddamn semicolon anywhere right that's not great for caching Dynamics
↗DHH Is Right About Everythingyoutube.com 5th of 8 in this recording
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Their wordsdo you know what is a differentiating experience if you if you run Linux and that's just a virtue of it being the path less taken
↗DHH Is Right About Everythingyoutube.com 12th of 8 in this recording
- 4 months earlier
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Our reading · no longer heldRuby on Rails took off because its creator evangelized it by arguing its superiority against the competing alternatives.
Recalls holdingAnd for a long time, I thought that's what had worked. That this was why Ruby on Rails took off, became one of the most popular full-stack web frameworks of all time, inspired countless clones, and created hundreds of billions in enterprise value for companies built on it. But I was wrong. It wasn't the crusade that did it.
SaidAnd for a long time, I thought that's what had worked. That this was why Ruby on Rails took off, became one of the most popular full-stack web frameworks of all time, inspired countless clones, and created hundreds of billions in enterprise value for companies built on it. But I was wrong. It wasn't the crusade that did it.
- 9 months earlier
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Their wordsTypeScript just gets in the way of that for me. Not just because it requires an explicit compile step, but because it pollutes the code with type gymnastics that add ever so little joy to my development experience, and quite frequently considerable grief.
- 4 months earlier
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Their wordsLet's be real here. The modern world we live in was designed and executed from an office. It's a perfectly legitimate way of working.
- 17 months earlier
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Our reading · no longer heldOpen source projects should adopt the commercial software playbook to compete for attention, and that professionalization is unequivocally good for open source.
Recalls holdingI used to think that this was unequivocally a win for open source. That to fight for attention with the commercial alternatives, we had to adopt the commercial playbook. Now I think it’s at the very least a mixed blessing.
SaidI used to think that this was unequivocally a win for open source. That to fight for attention with the commercial alternatives, we had to adopt the commercial playbook. Now I think it’s at the very least a mixed blessing.
- 4 months earlier
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Our reading · no longer heldThe complexity of a JavaScript bundling and transpiling toolchain is a bargain worth making, and the right default for building web applications.
Recalls holdingFive years later, the facts on the ground have finally changed. I no longer believe that this bargain is worth it for most new applications.
SaidFive years later, the facts on the ground have finally changed. I no longer believe that this bargain is worth it for most new applications.
↗Modern web apps without JavaScript bundling or transpilingworld.hey.com