What About Rails?

The author delivers a sharp critique of David Heinemeier Hansson's (DHH) opening keynote at Rails World 2026, where the creator of Ruby on Rails largely ignored the framework to instead champion an AI-dominated future of coding in Rust. This departure from Rails-centric discussion, especially as 37signals moves its Hey product off the stack, signals a significant shift in DHH's priorities and leaves the Rails community grappling with an uncertain future.

DHH, now styling himself a 'maker,' declared his retirement from professional programming, advocating for LLMs to write code in 'English' and suggesting that reading generated code will become the exception. He championed Rust, a language he previously disdained, as ideal for LLMs due to its performance, claiming massive productivity gains from AI-generated Rust code (150k lines in a month). Crucially, 37signals is rebuilding Hey as native applications using Rust and LLMs, effectively moving a flagship product away from its Rails origins. The author highlights DHH's contradictory demands for services to offer CLIs for agent interaction, despite 37signals focusing on high-fidelity UIs. The article systematically debunks DHH's claims of exaggerated productivity, flawed historical analogies (ATMs), and questionable metrics (lines of code), noting a complete absence of a strategic vision for Rails. The core issue identified is DHH's failure to provide guidance or a clear future for Rails at its dedicated conference, instead offering only vague reassurances to its developers.

Ultimately, the piece laments DHH's abandonment of the very framework he created without offering a successor vision. The author argues that while DHH is free to pursue his AI/Rust ambitions, his position demands clarity for the Rails community, leaving the question of Rails' future direction wide open.