A coding legend says goodbye to handwritten code.
David Heinemeier Hansson – commonly known as DHH – is the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web application framework. He also runs software company 37signals, where he just introduced a new rule: “We’re done writing code by hand.”
“We go there, and we went there, pencils down,” Hansson said during the Rails World keynote.
At his software company, 37signals, Hansson said handwriting code was an “exceptional state,” which should only be performed if there was a problem with the AI-generated code.
When an AI agent isn’t able to produce what the engineers want, they can “take out the old pencil and write it down for them,” Hansson said — but then they “fix the machine.”
“It’s a recognition of what’s already happening,” he said.
Indeed, coding has radically transformed over the past year, thanks to AI tools like OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Code, and Cursor.
Some developers call coding agents exhilarating and stay up late at night building with them. Others call AI coding a lonely or tedious process.
What do engineers really think? Business Insider surveyed more than 150 software engineers in January about the rise of vibe coding. More than 45% of respondents said they felt they were “keeping up” with AI tools. 17.5% of respondents said they are giving up on using AI code editing tools altogether.
There’s only one “serious question” in this coding moment, Hansson said during the keynote: how to best reap the rewards of AI. “All the other questions sit below that pile of values,” he said.
Hansson asked the audience: “How many people here still write significant amounts of code by hand on a weekly basis?
After looking at the crowd, Hansson let out a curse. “It’s been about five hours,” he said.
Gn tech
