Rails creator DHH says he no longer writes code by hand

David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, said he has not written a line of code by hand since March, after 25 years as a professional programmer. He made the comment at the Rails World 2026 conference, The Decoder reported. "English is a better programming language than Ruby," he said.

Hansson said manual coding no longer makes economic sense for most programmers. He predicted that by the end of the year, the shift could apply to practically every domain of software work, not just his own. He called it "the biggest thing that has happened in the history of computing" during an emotional keynote, The Decoder said.

Rather than mourning the change, Hansson framed it as a career shift. Programmers, he said, are becoming "professional makers of things" who direct AI systems instead of typing code themselves. He argued that software architecture needs rethinking, too, since traditional abstractions could lose their value once AI agents modify code on their own.

The comments mark a reversal. Just over a year ago, Hansson was a vocal public critic of AI-assisted coding, The Decoder reported. The outlet did not say which AI tools he now uses, or how quickly the shift took hold across his own projects.