DHH’s new way of writing code

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) is the creator of Ruby on Rails and Omarchy, co-founder and CTO of 37signals (maker of Basecamp and HEY), and the author of several books including the best-seller, Remote: Office Not Required, co-written with Jason Fried. Six months ago, in an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast https://lexfridman.com/dhh-david-heinemeier-hansson, David shared how he doesn’t use AI tools to write code: he types out all his code. But things have changed a lot since then. In this episode, we discuss his approach to building software, how it’s changed in the last six months, and why he now takes an agent-first approach, and how he barely writes any code by hand. We go into how he uses AI agents: which alter how he builds and explores ideas, but also how his standards of quality and craft remain the same. We also discuss how 37signals thinks about product development, from the role of designers to the importance of aesthetics and taste. David gets into how he sees beauty and functionality as closely linked, and why strong opinions about design lead to better software. Finally, we look into the uneven impact of AI which amplifies senior engineers while creating challenges for junior developers, and what this may mean for the role of the software engineer. — *Brought to you by our season partners:* • Statsig — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. http://statsig.com/pragmatic • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review. https://www.sonarsource.com/pragmatic/?utm_medium=paid&utm_source=pragmaticengineer&ut[…]egory=Paid&s_source=Paid%20Other&s_origin=pragmaticengineer • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. https://workos.com/ — *The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:* • Are AI agents actually slowing us down? https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/are-ai-agents-actually-slowing-us • How Claude Code is built https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-claude-code-is-built • The future of software engineering with AI: six predictions https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-future-of-software-engineering-with-ai • The AI Engineering Stack https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-ai-engineering-stack • Mitchell Hashimoto’s new way of writing code https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mitchell-hashimoto • How Linux is built with Greg Kroah-Hartman https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-linux-is-built-with-greg-kroah Bonus clip: ⁠DHH on escaping the "Apple Bubble"⁠: https://youtu.be/w4q-aKyHuA4 — *Where to find DHH:* • X: https://x.com/dhh • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-heinemeier-hansson-374b18221 • Website: https://dhh.dk • Newsletter: https://world.hey.com/dhh • Podcast: https://37signals.com/podcast — *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Intro (02:11) Omarchy and Ruby on Rails (08:25) 37signals overview (10:12) Launching HEY (18:38) Building HEY (22:47) Designers at 37signals (28:08) The craft of design (31:52) Why DHH now embraces AI workflows (39:45) The AI inflection point (44:23) DHH’s agent-first workflow (55:09) AI’s impact on junior developers (1:03:08) Developer experience with AI (1:16:43) What does AI mean for developers? (1:23:33) 37signals teams and hiring (1:38:20) Work-life balance with AI (1:41:41) Why DHH keeps building (1:45:24) Closing — See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.