What David Heinemeier Hansson thinks about design
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
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.
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26 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 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 months earlier
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Their wordsNot just as instruments of action, but as delightful environments for play, learning, and connection
- 6 days earlier
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Our readingThe agentic age needs a new operating system
Their wordsWhen you're able to change not just individual applications, but your system's menu bars, your window manager, your notification system, your everything
- 7 days earlier
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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 21 in this recording
- 9 months earlier
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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 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
- 9 months earlier
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Their wordsThe web does not have to be as complicated as we've let it become
- 13 days earlier
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Their wordsIn 1976, most computers didn't even have a mouse. In 2024, most vi-successor users don't even need one when programming.
- 8 days earlier
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Their wordsThe problem with passkeys is that they're essentially a halfway house to a password manager
↗Passwords have problems, but passkeys have moreworld.hey.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsUnless you accept the idea that all your passwords should be tied to one computing ecosystem, and thus make it hard to use alternative computers
↗Passwords have problems, but passkeys have moreworld.hey.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
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Our readingOptimizing for programmer productivity is more valuable than optimizing for computer efficiency
Their wordsSo as every year passes, it becomes an even better deal trading compute time for programmer productivity
↗Optimize for bio cores first, silicon cores secondworld.hey.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
- 13 days earlier
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Our readingPeople tend to say in surveys that they want more options than they actually use or want in practice
Their wordsOf course, everyone says they want something simple, but the way they buy reveals that they usually don't.
↗Merchants of complexityworld.hey.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsnobody knows exactly what it should look like until they start building
↗Software estimates have never worked and never willworld.hey.com
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsIf you follow these bad ideas to their logical conclusion, you end up with worse than useless products
↗Google's sad ideological capture was exactly what we were trying to avoidworld.hey.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
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Our readingIt is a blind spot to only use one platform
Their wordsI think it's fair to say that within certain parts of the web communities, the Mac has become an echo chamber with both designers and programmers
↗You can own more than one type of computer!world.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsthey should be able to install whatever software they should so choose
↗We need a Right To Computeworld.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Our readingSweden's longer open-door immigration policy left it in a world of hurt compared to Denmark
Their wordsSweden, which otherwise shares a lot of similarities with the Danes in terms of welfare-state design. They went with an open-door policy on immigration for far longer, ended up taking many more (about 3x Denmark), and are now in a world of hurt with the highest gun-murder rate in all of Europe, along with an overall crime rate 50% greater than Denmark
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Our readingStyle in code is invariably idiosyncratic
Their wordsThat to me is the essence of style, it's invariably idiosyncratic
- 6 months earlier
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Our readingEvery material has a grain, including the web, and designs that work against it end up weaker
Their wordsKnowing how to cut with the grain makes getting the most out of the material much easier
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsNot all connections benefit from having the friction removed by digital systems
↗We need not all be connected, all the timeworld.hey.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- 8 days earlier
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Their wordsSpending the majority of our time pushing the products forward with our direct work on design, programming, copywriting, or whatever
- 3 weeks earlier
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Our readingMicroservices pose perhaps the biggest siren song for needlessly complicating your system.
Their wordsin practice, microservices pose perhaps the biggest siren song for needlessly complicating your system.
↗Even Amazon can't make sense of serverless or microservicesworld.hey.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsReplacing method calls and module separations with network invocations and service partitioning within a single, coherent team and application is madness in almost all cases.
↗Even Amazon can't make sense of serverless or microservicesworld.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 15 months earlier
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Their wordssimpler tools that are still able to hit those high-fidelity user interface notes, but at a sliver of the cost in complexity
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsSoftware developers and designers aren't happy doing assembly line work
↗No one wants to be a code monkeyworld.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Our readingThe right to repair is essential
Their wordsYou'd think that after spending such an extravagant sum on a new pocket computer, you should be able to have fixed if it breaks by whomever you chose