DHH’s new way of writing code

Most people who are fully embracing AI are working harder than ever before, finding the effectiveness and impact of supervising AI agents to be intoxicating.

David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails, dramatically shifted his stance on AI coding tools from skepticism to an 'AI-first' approach within a few weeks over a winter break.

David Heinemeier Hansson created a new Linux distribution called Omarchy, building it on top of Arch and Hyperland, which started as a summer project.

David Heinemeier Hansson developed Ruby on Rails in 2003 while building Basecamp, as there was a lack of adequate tooling for web applications in Ruby at the time.

Omarchy, after just over six months, has garnered 400 contributors who have made code changes and tens of thousands of users who have installed it as their daily driver.

37signals transitioned from offering Linux as an optional choice to mandating its use for all technical staff (excluding iOS developers) to align with their production environment and foster contributions to their Omarchy distribution.

Apple initially refused to approve Hey.com's app in the App Store unless 37signals paid a 30% fee, which was considered a 'death sentence' for an email product requiring iPhone presence.

Hey.com's screener feature prevents unsolicited emails from reaching a user's inbox, requiring explicit approval from the user for each sender.

Building Hey.com took approximately two years, primarily involving David Heinemeier Hansson and a small design team, focusing on figuring out the product's unique shape and solving unarticulated user problems.

David Heinemeier Hansson believes that current agent harnesses and CLIs validate the fundamental Unix philosophy of building small, interoperable tools, allowing agents to tie together various systems like Sentry, GitHub, and Basecamp.

David Heinemeier Hansson used Opus and Codeex to ping-pong and develop a plan for implementing dual-boot functionality with Lux encryption for Omarchy, a complex and critical task he previously avoided.

David Heinemeier Hansson is actively 'leaning in hard' with agent accessibility, working on a new CLI for Basecamp and other products, acknowledging that agents still need human help to achieve desired quality.