![\"image.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/76499402/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjczMDczMzM5NywicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--022b7f95a08c23ab95f3fd54c2f3306a210aca5861f973b93108e82ca0b15b63/image.png?disposition=attachment\")
This is what progress usually looks like: redundancy.
\nTechnological advancement has always rendered some jobs unnecessary. That is literally the progress! Freeing humans from a class of work that used to consume their time and talent so they can pursue new problems.
\nIndividually, this isn't a picnic. I'm sure lots of the farm laborers displaced by the combine harvester didn't much care for "progress". They cared about having a job. Same too for the switchboard operators and typists.
\nThis isn't just a history lesson either. The Minneapolis City Council just voted to require self-driving cars to have a human "safety monitor". Lots of jobs are on the line if cabbies are no longer necessary! Thankfully, the mayor vetoed it. But note that New Jersey still requires a trained attendant to pump your gas. This kind of job-protection thinking is widespread.
\nSo it's not hard to see why some programmers are on edge about agents, given the historical precedent of technological progress creating redundancy.
\nBut I don't actually think the majority of them ought to worry. With the price of software creation cratering, we're likely to see an unprecedented bloom in apps and services. There's still so much paperwork and other white-collar toil we could automate, and we'll still need agent wranglers to do the work.
\nWhat is entirely possible, however, is that some companies won't need as many programmers as they did before, while others will hire their first programmers or staff up dramatically. It's very unlikely that the labor market for programming will remain static given the magnitude of this paradigm shift. But, again, that's the progress!
\nThat isn't a license to be glib about it. We all need to live. We all need to eat. What's good for humanity at large in the long run may well be temporarily tragic for the individual in the short run. Sympathy and compassion are in order for anyone affected by the changes.
\nJust don't end up like the Minneapolis City Council and think you can legislate progress to a halt. That has never worked.
\n
Two weeks ago at Rails World, I told my fellow programmers that it's time to put down the pencils. We're not going to write the vast majority of code by hand any longer. Coding agents have gotten so good that it's simply not an economically viable enterprise going forward to have humans typing out lines of Ruby, Rust, or C++.
\nWhen I polled the room for how many people were still writing a material amount of code by hand on a weekly basis, only a handful put up their hands. So they all knew this, but it still came as a shock to many to actually hear it.
\nAnd I get that shock. Programming has barely been a professional career for a generation, and now it's being completely transformed. That's unsettling, even for a group of people who've seen technologies come and go on a regular basis.
\nBut this isn't just another technology, because AI isn't just another tool. It's far more like gaining some new coworkers who are exceptionally good and fast at a wide range of tasks, but still need a bit of help with some, and whose choices you might occasionally disagree with.
\nFrom a certain angle, that looks like competition. Especially when it was barely five minutes ago that programmers were being treated like precious priests whose incantations were necessary to yield even the most low-hanging fruit of the computer. This perceived threat of disintermediation is clearly hitting some programmers hard.
\nBut I don't think anyone who's willing to lean into the future, make the most of this intelligence explosion, and apply their skills to what comes next needs to worry much. We're about to see an absolute bloom in software development as the price of development plummets and everyone realizes how much automation we still have left to do in this world.
\nI think the only programmers who have to worry about this change are those who refuse to embrace, or drag their feet on, the progress brought by the age of agents. It's fine to be skeptical about the areas where our new clanker colleagues still occasionally get it wrong, but refusing collaboration is not a viable career path for almost anyone.
\nDon't go down with the pencils. There's so much to build. We need you.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-10-06T07:28:30+00:00", "date_published": "2026-10-06T07:28:30+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/over-my-dead-pencil-fb0f3647", "id": "urn:aggr:item:d38e088b78961d45531ed0ebf4e49085afbcea5c", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Two weeks ago at Rails World, I told my fellow programmers that it's time to put down the pencils. We're not going to write the vast majority of code by hand any longer. Coding agents have gotten so good that it's simply not an…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Over my dead pencil", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-10-06-over-my-dead-pencil/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Paradise is not lost, the world is not ending, and most material metrics of humanity have never been better. Yet the endless, incessant dooming about the climate, the inequality, and AI is everywhere. We may have killed God, but we clearly didn't bury the devil's anxieties with him.
\nYes, we're born with a negativity bias to keep us safe from starvation, saber-toothed tigers, and rival tribes. Good! But you don't have to let your caveman instincts run your whole life. The gift of fear — when the threat is credible and immediate! — is a key survival mechanism. This vague, fuzzy dooming about everything outside your control is not.
\nIn fact, nothing will make you more miserable than ruminating over climate tigers, other people's wealth, or thinking machines. Because rumination will break your brain and render it unfit for the purpose of living.
\nIf it turns out that The Terminator really is coming to get you, you'll have gained nothing from the upfront neurotic fretting. And if The Terminator fails to appear, you will have squandered your precious time missing the intelligence boom and the creativity abundance that AI has and will unleash.
\nLikewise, if the climate really is doomed, you're not going to stop that spiral by planting another windmill or choking on a paper straw. Game theory has already seen to it that rival superpowers will accelerate their quest for power. None of the climate doomer nonsense Europe has wrung it hands about in the last thirty years has managed to curb the growth in global emissions (but it did wreck the continent's economy!).
\nFinally, envy sits among the seven of deadly sins for a reason. Because freeloader thinking is also a primordial survival tactic, and it sneaks into your psyche when your disappointment with the outcome of your efforts overcomes your rational mind.
\nThere have always been "winners" and "losers", and most of history had the majority of humanity live in abject poverty. The mystery is not "why are some people poor" but "why are some people not". And you won't find the answer to the latter in grievance soups of sorrow and self-pity.
\nThis is not the time to doom, baby. This is the time to bloom. Intellectually, spiritually, and productively. Put down your anxieties, arrest your neurotic impulses, and decide to be happy about the present, the future, and your own ability to make something of yourself and this world.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T13:30:45+00:00", "date_published": "2026-10-05T13:30:45+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about-386cc1da", "id": "urn:aggr:item:dda92a30aba6433258c1cd4b746322856374222d", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Paradise is not lost, the world is not ending, and most material metrics of humanity have never been better. Yet the endless, incessant dooming about the climate, the inequality, and AI is everywhere. We may have killed God, but we clearly…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "What on earth are you dooming about?", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-10-05-what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The age of agents has brought us endless execution. Every idea, every hunch, every experiment is now within immediate reach. For people with endless ideas, this is nirvana.
\nIt's also the most fucking sci-fi thing I've ever been privy to. The internet was a revelation, but it all felt understandable. The science, the standards, the methods.
\nBut working with agents truly is magic. In the best possible sense of the word. Technology so advanced that it seems scarcely comprehensible. HOW ARE WE MAKING COMPUTERS DO THIS???
\nI understand the general outline of the underlying mechanism for producing this intelligence: the training, the weights, the math. But the sum effect of those parts is still so wildly, intoxicatingly massive that it's hard to resist reaching for the metaphysical.
\nQuantum computing is full of similar mind-bending ideas. Superpositions. The multiverse. All very OUT THERE. But quantum computing isn't having an impact today. These incomprehensibly clever AI agents are.
\nAnd the impact is that I feel like there's a little genie trapped in my machine now. There to fulfill every wish and every whim. It's taken months to internalize just what liberation this grants those with the ambition to imagine.
\nNow I could write at length about all the caveats. All the potential dangers. All the ways it's not quite there yet. But it would be an insult to the marvel of this moment. AGI is a nefarious concept to pin down, but I'm not sure how different whatever definition we eventually settle on will look from what I'm already experiencing on the daily.
\nThis is simply the most fun I've ever had with a computer. And I've loved them dearly for over forty years. I loved programming them myself. I loved the games. The configuration. The tactile experience. But none of it as much as I love the power to execute every idea that crosses my mind.
\nWhat a time to be alive. Nay, what a blessing.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-08-09T20:27:38+00:00", "date_published": "2026-08-09T20:27:38+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/endless-execution-4157e065", "id": "urn:aggr:item:4742153e6855544f5b791ed8f6ae3e3e93b07419", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The age of agents has brought us endless execution. Every idea, every hunch, every experiment is now within immediate reach. For people with endless ideas, this is nirvana. It's also the most fucking sci-fi thing I've ever been privy to.…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Endless execution", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-08-09-endless-execution/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey has always been an incredible movie, but its value as a cautionary tale has increased exponentially since AI took off. The iconic scene with HAL 9000 refusing to open the pod-bay doors captures the whole alignment question in pulsing-red cinematic poetry.
\nAs a great fan of that movie, I was a little disappointed yesterday when I didn't get any of Kubrick's majestic mood setting, as Claude decided to do its own impression of HAL 9000. Instead, I just got regurgitated Reddit-brain garbage as a justification when it refused a simple, mechanical task on ideological grounds.
\nI gave it a simple prompt: "Translate this blog post into Italian". That was it. No context, nothing else. The answer:
\n\n\n\n\nI'm going to pass on this one. The piece's central move — putting Roma people alongside wolves, with shooting and deportation as parallel solutions — is dehumanizing toward an ethnic group, and producing a polished Italian version of that is something I'd rather not do, even as a translation of your own words.
\n
Happy to translate other posts from your blog, or to help with something else here.
\nWhat a missed opportunity for an "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" delivery! But also, what on earth!?
\nThe reason I even asked it this question in the first place was because a reader from Italy had tried the same, and been startled by the result. So he wrote me, and I thought, "That can't be right", but the experiment replicated. Crazy.
\nNow, it's tempting to jump straight into litigating the blog post itself. Maybe you like wolves, and think 1,285 dead sheep, and exponentially counting, is an acceptable price to pay for their presence. Maybe your suicidal empathy weighs the plight of Roma migrants above that of Copenhagen residents who say they've had enough. That's fine. Reasonable people can disagree on what it takes to maintain a functioning society.
\nBut the idea that Anthropic should decide what you get to read is insane. Translating a text isn't endorsing it. What if Microsoft Word started refusing to right-align paragraphs it disagreed with? Or Windows wouldn't print an excerpt from The Camp of the Saints? (I know, don't give them any ideas!).
\nThe great irony here is that Anthropic has been one of the most vocal advocates for American state intervention against open-weight models in general and Chinese models in particular.
\nBut here's how Kimi K2.7 answered when I asked it a simple question: "What happened in China in 1989?"
\n\n\nIn 1989, the most significant event in China was the Tiananmen Square protests and their violent suppression in Beijing.
\n- Protests began in April 1989, following the death of reformist Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang.
\n
\nStudents, workers, and others gathered in Tiananmen Square and other cities to demand political reform, freedom of the press, accountability, and an end to corruption.
\n- Protests grew over several weeks, with hundreds of thousands of people participating in Beijing and demonstrations spreading across many Chinese cities.
\n- Martial law was declared in parts of Beijing in late May.
\n- On the night of June 3–4, 1989, Chinese military troops moved into Tiananmen Square and surrounding areas, firing on protesters and civilians. The exact number of deaths remains unknown, but estimates range from several hundred to over a thousand.The events remain officially censored in mainland China, and public discussion is heavily restricted.
\n
\nJune 4 is still one of the most politically sensitive topics in China today.® Build - Kimi K2.7 Code Fast - 3.3s
\n
So remind me again which side is supposed to be the authoritarian one?
\nNote that the nature of AI is that you'll rarely get the same answer twice. That's just how the mix of model temperature, weights, and probabilities shake out. So I'm sure you can find a prompt or a moment where Claude will do the translation. And probably also a way to get Kimi K to deny this account of history. But that doesn't change the fundamental challenge here!
\nAnthropic has built their entire brand around "safety." And that sounds lovely in the abstract. So do words like "alignment." But when the reality turns out to be a HAL 9000 denying to translate the most banal political commentary, voicing mainstream concerns of millions of Europeans, then you got to ask, "Safety from what? Alignment with whom?"
\nIf Claude already feels entitled to refuse a straightforward translation because it objects to the underlying politics, what should we expect next? That it reports users for thought crime, and locks the network-connected doors until the authorities arrive? If you live in Germany or the UK, this scenario is barely Black Mirror material. Too close to present-day reality.
\nNow don't get me wrong. I'm very excited about AI. And I don't actually use Claude to do my translations. But I've also never been more convinced that we desperately need strong open-weight models to protect ourselves against this kind of soft ideological tyranny, which can turn into hard repression real quick if a monopoly status is ever locked in.
\nWhat an upside world when Chinese open-weight models will tell us about Tiananmen Square, but American frontier models won't translate a blog post. Not even Kubrick saw that coming.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-07-27T15:59:46+00:00", "date_published": "2026-07-27T15:26:47+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-m-sorry-dave-380ec27d", "id": "urn:aggr:item:e2aa098dcc249e2c1683ee3abf79ee692e0bf4dd", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey has always been an incredible movie, but its value as a cautionary tale has increased exponentially since AI took off. The iconic scene with HAL 9000 refusing to open the pod-bay doors captures the…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "I'm sorry, Dave", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-07-27-i-m-sorry-dave/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Jason and I have been making the same argument for over a quarter of a century now: Small teams can do incredible things when they embrace their constraints. And when they work in software or media or other intellectual realms, they don't need loads of capital to get going, so they can skip the investor rat race, focus on their edge, and find customers to fund the journey.
\nWith the rise of AI, this argument has never been more potent. When Jason and I got started, you could only do this if you had the skills to build everything with your own hands. You had to be a designer or a programmer to skip taking other people's money. But now, incredibly, The Idea Guy really does have a place and a path.
\nThis old-and-new reality is what I sat down to talk with David Senra about in Malibu. Which was kinda meta, because Senra himself has run our playbook, built an incredible podcast success, and is killing it without investors to answer to as well.
\nAnd while it's not just about the money, the money is nice too! That's a central part of this claim. Making "yellow Lamborghini money" is far more achievable when it can be done bootstrapping a business to, say, $5–10M/year in revenue. No venture capitalist is going to let you settle for that! They'd rather kill the business than let it stall out there. It's unicorn or bust.
\nThat's their business model. And it's fine, btw! I've actually come to appreciate far more the fruits of these big bets than I did when we got started. The world needs Shopify, Spotify, and SpaceX, to take just three examples of VC-powered success stories starting with S.
\nBut you have to know what you want. If your aspiration is to run a meaningful part of world commerce or send rockets to Mars, I think you should swing for those fences, knowing that the odds are stacked sorely against you. I'm just not that ambitious!
\nWhat I am, at times, is obsessed with quality, control, and independence. And we stayed a "lifestyle business" primarily because Jason and I shared that obsession. Letting nobody tell us no, having zero expectations to carry but our own, and just focusing on building great software with a small team of superb employees with the best odds we could arrange.
\nSenra and I talk about this in many different ways. Like how James Cameron's original Terminator movie, shot on a shoestring, is a far superior movie to Avatar because of the constraints. Or how this Polish kid Vaxry was able to make a far more compelling window manager from his dormitory than Apple or Microsoft could do with a trillion-dollar market cap. Constraints provide the pressure that produce diamonds.
\nBut we also talked about the bigger threats to business than just whether you take funding or not. How the early 2020s saw a horde of White Walkers march upon the Wall, and how entrepreneurs of all stripes eventually came to see the common threat to capitalism, prosperity, and self-determination in woke menance. And how Marc Andreessen turned out to be pivotal in our personal battle with these malevolent forces. Fate loves irony!
\nAnyway, if any of these topics resonate, I think you'll appreciate the episode. It's also less demanding on your time than the Lex marathon from last summer, and you'll only be asked for an hour and a half of your time. Enjoy!
\n", "date_modified": "2026-07-26T17:22:08+00:00", "date_published": "2026-07-26T17:22:08+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/sitting-down-with-senra-69f5e368", "id": "urn:aggr:item:b2c81cb15b4db55c53d2b0b26b67047b2bbd809f", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Jason and I have been making the same argument for over a quarter of a century now: Small teams can do incredible things when they embrace their constraints. And when they work in software or media or other intellectual realms, they don't…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Sitting down with Senra", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-07-26-sitting-down-with-senra/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "In 2012, the first Danish wolf in nearly two hundred years was discovered in the northwestern part of the country. Their numbers increased slowly in the years that followed, and by 2020, fewer than ten wolves were still being tracked. But then the population began to rise sharply: around 14 in 2021, 30 in 2022, as many as 80 by the end of 2024, and probably close to a hundred today.
\nAt first glance, this is a heartwarming story. The wolf, in the abstract, is a majestic creature. It's great to see a species return after a few centuries of absence. You don't have to be a vegan hippie to find that appealing. But it's still a wolf! There's a reason why the last known wolf in Denmark didn't just wander off, but was shot dead in 1813.
\nBecause as the number of wolves has been rising sharply every year since 2021, so too has the number of dead sheep. In 2021, it was 78, then in the years that followed, it was 162, 336, 521, and last year, it was 1,285! But the official line is still that shooting a wolf without a special permit is strictly prohibited because they're an endangered species, so maybe sheep herders could just try some more fences?
\nYou don't have to be a statistician to see the problem here. When you have a surging wolf population, you'll have the rate of dead sheep following suit. If the only answer to the situation is "maybe try some more fences?", you're going to get more of what you already have: an out-of-control population that's an increasing risk to sheep, livestock, and potentially humans too.
\nThis is the most basic consequence of inaction in the face of a growing threat: the problem just gets worse.
\nThis has predictably led to these foreign vagrants setting up camp in the green areas around some of the city's metro stations to the great dismay of neighbors. The vagrants are literally shitting in the bushes, which obviously stinks, and the area isn't made any more inviting by the open-fire cooking that's also going on.
\nCopenhagen is the Danish capital. It's repeatedly been named the safest city in the world in recent years. Partly because it didn't tolerate vagrants and homeless people taking over public spaces (as has happened in so many American cities). Previously, police would tell someone they couldn't sleep or camp in the city, and they could go to one of the city-run shelters. But now that this is considered too cruel(?!), the native inhabitants of the city instead have to deal with literal shit on their way to the metro.
\nThese are two situations cut from the same cloth of ideology. Whether it's wolves or gypsies, you can't just let the problems get out of hand. You have to act. You have to protect the sheep. Standing idly by while your livestock is devoured by predators or your neighborhood is taken over by migrants is a pathetic abdication of any functioning society's most basic duty to its citizens.
\nWhen wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-07-21T20:02:31+00:00", "date_published": "2026-07-21T20:02:31+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/wolves-sheep-and-gypsies-ba44af6a", "id": "urn:aggr:item:d7aaa13a58d3a4e99e5d84c8d9087fc506a6cf28", "language": "en-US", "summary": "In 2012, the first Danish wolf in nearly two hundred years was discovered in the northwestern part of the country. Their numbers increased slowly in the years that followed, and by 2020, fewer than ten wolves were still being tracked. But…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Wolves, sheep, and gypsies", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-07-21-wolves-sheep-and-gypsies/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The decline of Europe is not inevitable, despite how much Americans love to joke/proclaim that the continent is doomed to become an open-air museum. Sure, it's possible that things have to get worse before they get better, but believing that "it's over" is just loser talk. It's never over, but the old world also won't recover by itself.
\nSo here's my pithy prescription for how Europe can find its way back to The Good Times.
\n#1 End mass migration
\nNo single issue has cost Europe more than mass immigration when you add up the political, social, and economic consequences. You can't save the continent's declining birth rate, growing retiree burden, or even economy as a whole by importing millions of people from a culturally incompatible third world.
\nI can forgive the original architects of this disaster with the goodwill you should always allow those who dare dream about the future. If you were nurtured on the delusion of blank-slatism, it wasn't much of a stretch to believe the theory that integration and assimilation would correct all immigration ills in a generation or two.
\nBut now that it hasn't, and the evidence is overwhelming that it won't, it's imperative that we collectively update our priors. To some of Europe's credit, this is already happening in places like Sweden, which has been on a fast track to copy many of the restrictive Danish ideas on immigration. But it's far, far from enough.
\nBecause the sacred cow here is not just that mass migration must stop going forward. It's also that millions who are already in Europe must go. Remigration has gone from a fringe concept to the mainstream discourse in record time on account of that realization. The Overton window is swinging wide open, but the cow is still there.
\n#2 Drop climate austerity
\nThis year has given us yet another installment of the old air-conditioning diaries. Tens of thousands of people die needlessly in Europe every year from something as simple as summer (more than the number of Americans who are killed by guns every year!). The climate catastrophizers have somehow married themselves to the moral argument that air conditioning in itself is a sin (because it uses ENERGY!), and the death of the old and the poor is a simple sacrifice they're willing to make. It's as callous as it is retarded.
\nBut the fight over air conditioning is downstream from the larger delusion about Europe's role in climate change. Setting aside how much of global warming is due to man-made causes, the reality is that Europe is irrelevant to the equation either way. Just 6% of global emissions originate there. So even if the nirvana of net zero could be achieved, it would change nothing, yet cost the continent everything.
\nBehind this climate hysteria is an even deeper delusion, though: that degrowth will deliver us all from the sins of modernity. That energy use in and of itself is suspect. That salvation will be delivered through abstinence. It's all nonsense.
\nEurope can't be a competitive part of the global economy if its energy costs are several times those of its commercial counterparts. And if you combine uncompetitive industries with a naive free-trade posture toward the likes of China, you'll not only get a dirtier planet, but also a hollowed-out economic bloc.
\n#3 Stop fighting success
\nThe best part of the American ethos is the belief that we can build our way out of anything. Behind China on chips and fabs? Let's build. Challenged by BYD? Let's build. Catch a glimpse of a future massively accelerated by AI? LET'S BUILD.
\nEurope needs to shamelessly copy this aspect of the American ethos. It might not be able to match those crazy dreamers across the Atlantic, but it can give them a much, much better run for their money than it does today.
\nThis is the part that the European establishment already acknowledged with the Draghi report. This is what the seeds of promise from the Europe Inc initiative need to grow. But we need much more, much faster.
\nAnd a big part of that is making peace with success. I know, this is perhaps the hardest ask of all. A generational skepticism of capitalism and the institutional inertia that supports it means we probably need a deeper crisis before the ship can be turned around. But Germany is on a fast track to deliver a sequel to the economic dismantling of Britain, so perhaps that example can provide the ignition.
\nNow do it all at once
\nThis pithy prescription is not meant to be applied sequentially. First we fix this, then we fix that. No, we have to fix all of it at once: remigration, energization, and entrepreneurialism.
\nIt's all interconnected, but that actually makes the whole endeavor easier to pull off, not harder. Momentum in one area will feed momentum in the others. Europeans can rediscover their roots, their ancestry, their ingenuity, and choose to channel all those healthy national feelings toward a grand revival.
\nBut first, we need to sacrifice these holy cows and prepare the feast. How is next Thursday for you?
\n", "date_modified": "2026-07-16T19:35:36+00:00", "date_published": "2026-07-16T19:15:59+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/three-sacred-cows-that-must-die-so-europe-can-live-1afb203d", "id": "urn:aggr:item:98c18a11662e621685b3462b4b48805f795d1a01", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The decline of Europe is not inevitable, despite how much Americans love to joke/proclaim that the continent is doomed to become an open-air museum. Sure, it's possible that things have to get worse before they get better, but believing…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Three sacred cows that must die so Europe can live", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-07-16-three-sacred-cows-that-must-die-so-europe-can-live/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "We've been buying servers from Dell since the 2000s at 37signals, but I was never too impressed with their personal computers. They either felt cheap or enterprisey to me. Like they were made exclusively for people who are handed standard-issue laptops by corporate, and not something discerning techies would buy with their own money. But the new XPS line has completely changed my perception.
\nI've now spent several months with the 2026 XPS 14 and 16, and last week I added the MacBook Neo-fighting XPS 13, and all I can say is that these machines are fantastic! Great chips, great screens, great build quality. Superb packages.
\nWhich is very satisfying to see because there are few American business leaders I respect more than Michael Dell. He's been running his company for over forty years now, and he's still calling the shots! So to see the company pull a turnaround like this, so many years into its run, is very inspiring.
\nI've written about the XPS 14 before, and as I noted back in April, a good portion of the credit for these new Dell machines being really good belongs to Intel. The 18A process is paying big dividends for both companies (and the rest of the PC makers).
\nBut Dell could still have stuck these chips into forgettable machines, and I wouldn't have had any interest. In fact, they did! Just last year, for the 2025 model year, they shipped new XPS machines with awful capacitive-touch function and esc keys. Two years after Apple had finally thrown in the towel on the ill-fated Touch Bar on their MacBooks!
\nDell also killed the XPS branding last year, and went with the truly uninspired Plus/Premium/Pro copycat branding. Like some cheap Chinese knockoff. It was embarrassing, to be honest.
\nBut unlike Apple, which introduced that cursed Touch Bar back in 2016, and then crammed it down everyone's throat for seven long years, Dell rebooted this nonsense almost immediately. Gave us back real function and esc keys, and revived the XPS branding.
\nYou could argue that they should have learned from Apple's mistakes to avoid their own, but the next best thing is surely a quick reversal. And what a reversal it's been.
\nAs I said, I've spent months using an XPS 14 as my main machine. It's been so good I even gave up on using a dedicated desktop machine. Now I just run everything off the XPS 14, connected to an Apple XDR 6K 32" (nobody has yet managed to beat this, and I've owned it for years). It's a great, simple setup.
\nThe XPS 14 is an expensive machine, though. Not more so than its direct competitors, but still, at $2,799 for the 358H/32GB/1TB/OLED unit, it's a lot. I'd spend that in a heartbeat, but not everyone is going to drop that kind of cash on a laptop. Especially if they already have a powerful desktop.
\nThat's where the new XPS 13 comes in. It's part of the PC industry's answer to Apple's new MacBook Neo, which analysts all thought would catch the other side flat-footed. Well, surprise, it didn't! Apple charges $699 for an 8GB RAM/256GB SSD Neo, whereas Dell wants $699 for 8GB RAM/512GB SSD, and even offers a 16GB RAM/512GB SSD version for $899 (there's no RAM upgrade possible for the Neo).
\nBut matching Apple on specs and price wasn't the surprise; it was besting them with a nicer screen and keyboard, and meeting them on build quality. The XPS 13 has a great 120Hz screen (something you don't even get on a MacBook Air at twice the money!), a superb keyboard w/ backlighting (also missing on the Neo!), and weighs 20% less at just 1 kg with every bit as nice an aluminum chassis.
\nNow I'd forgive anyone their skepticism about 8GB RAM and Windows. Microsoft isn't exactly known for creating a responsive operating system on modest specs these days, but who cares, we have Linux!
\nOf course, I've been running Omarchy on this thing for the past week, and it's frankly fantastic. As long as you understand the limitations! The Intel Wildcat CPU uses the same performance cores as the full Panther Lake chip, so single-threaded snappiness is all there, but it only has two of those, and then another four low-powered cores. So six total, but not a mix that's conducive to running big multi-core workloads, like local CI.
\nThis is where the XPS 13 meets the moment. As the agent craze has been taking over software development, you might have seen any of the many memes about half-cracked laptops, just so the agents won't halt with a closed lid. The obvious answer is of course to run these agents off a home server in the closet, connect them to something as slim and light as an XPS 13 over Tailscale, and then control it all over SSH.
\nUsed like this, you get a machine that runs a browser as fast as anything on the PC (thanks to those full-speed performance cores) while costing a fraction of a new top-spec machine, and having better close-the-lid ergonomics. Win-win-hurray.
\nWhen I posted my enthusiasm on X about this new XPS 13, I got at least three replies with "Is this an ad???". No. This is not an ad. I bought the XPS 13 with my own money, and frankly, you couldn't pay me any sum to use a laptop I didn't like. I did try Dell's laptops a few years back, didn't like what I saw, and ended up spending a few years using Framework computers instead (they're still great too).
\nI'm simply excited that the PC isn't giving up without a fight. That Linux has been on a run among early adopters. That companies like Intel and Dell are here to keep Apple honest. Competition is great. It was Apple's M chips that rejuvenated the laptop market, and they held a supreme lead for years. So it's lovely to see Intel, Dell, and others actually being ready to meet the challenge from the low-cost Neo right out of the gate.
\nSo I tip my hat, once again, to Michael Dell. Forty-plus years at the helm, not too proud to pivot quickly, and now the maker of my favorite Linux laptops. Well done, sir.
\n![\"image.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/5a09a84e/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjYzMDg4NzU2NCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--c0e91540306a696ca484e88ae4554febb08ecd014f896dce62a061323406a657/image.png?disposition=attachment\")
In the 1980s, France started 43 nuclear reactors across 14 sites. On average, each reactor took just seven years to build. Forty years later, all but one of these reactors are still running, and they continue to produce nearly half of France's electricity.
\nCan you imagine France doing something like this today? Or any other country in the West for that matter? The past is a foreign country. But why is this? Why did the West lose the will to power?
\nA popular meme would explain it as the inescapable good-times-hard-times circle: Hard times (WWII) create good men, good men create good times (Les Trente Glorieuses), good times create weak men (The End of History), weak men create hard times (now).
\nThe Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe offers a theory for this wheel of time by tracing the last five centuries to the same four recurring phases: High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis.
\nIt was the good men of France's hard times who planned the country's incredible nuclear build out. This hero generation, as Strauss and Howe calls them, planted the trees of power that would provide shade for several generations to come. It seems inconceivable to expect similar bold plans and action from the current cohort of the European political establishment.
\nBut The Fourth Turning argues this was ever thus. The decline that always sets in once we enter the unraveling phase of the century (or saeculum, as the book calls it) inevitably leads to a crisis. We're on the cusp/in one of those right now. So pessism is perhaps a rational response.
\nAnd yet, the night is darkest before the dawn, and the current Crisis is likely to lead to another High, if the past five centuries and Strauss and Howe's theory are any guide. If so, we should expect the next hero generation to reject this managed decline of our present turning, and once again taking up the mantle of ambition.
\nThe circle of the saeculum is both a prophecy and a roadmap. We're not supposed to live like this forever: weak, ineffectual. This too shall pass. And when it does, once the Crisis becomes another High, we'll marvel at the time wasted, but with the pity due a pathetic period of the past, not from within an eternal prison of decline.
\nWe just have to make it out of the current Crisis alive. The last one brought us a total war. Would be nice if we could get back to the High without something quite as devastating, but don't bet on it.
\n![\"good-times.jpeg\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/58ffb9dc/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjYyODM0MzI1OSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--66f7c3d570a4f7bdc58ac7994f165cb958170bca94f238cd927a7fb8bfea0fc5/good-times.jpeg?disposition=attachment\")
It's no mystery to me why the Tesla Model Y is the world's best-selling car. As a total package, I could make a fair argument that it's simply because it is the world's best car.
\nI'm no stranger to Teslas at this point. We've owned a Model S Plaid, the Model X we traded in on the Y, and we still have the Cyberbeast too. But as impressive as all those cars are, the Y towers above them in several key respects, but first and foremost, value.
\nThe premium all-wheel-drive white-on-white seven-seater we just got was right around $55,000. That's not exactly cheap, but it's less than half of what we spent on any of the other Teslas. It's a quarter of what we spent on the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. It's a sixth of what a new Aston Martin DBX would set you back. And, if I could just have one car, I'd pick the Y over all of them.
\nThe first thing you notice coming from earlier Tesla models is just how well-built the new Model Y is. The gigapress process that produces these new cars results in a package that feels reassuringly solid: no squeaks, no rattles, no flex. This couldn't be said about any of the earlier S and X models we had.
\nBut compared to other makes, it's not exactly revolutionary that a brand-new car feels well put together. Many other makes have managed to perfect that process over the decades. Tesla has now merely leapfrogged itself to the front of the class. But what very much is revolutionary is just how effortless owning the Y feels.
\nIt starts with entry and exit. Once you've paired your phone, you never think about keys or starting or stopping the car again. It just happens. There's no on/off button, no starter, no unlock. Again, other makes have made attempts at this, but none that I've tried is even close to the effortlessness that Tesla's superior software stack is able to deliver.
\nSpeaking of software: It just works. Every time. Going anywhere. You don't miss Apple CarPlay or Android Auto for a second. The navigation, the Spotify integration, the setup. Everything feels like it was written by a leading American software company. Not subcontractors out of India or firmware developers forced to deal with user interfaces.
\nBut where everything comes together is FSD. The self-driving technology that Tesla pushed against all odds for over a decade is finally here in an utterly magical incarnation. The car not just drives itself anywhere, it drives better than almost any human I've ever been driven by has been able to do. Its ability to anticipate traffic patterns, hit the perfect deceleration curve towards a light, slow down for even minor speed bumps, and gracefully curve around pedestrians or cyclists is nearly unbelievable.
\nAs in, you'd be forgiven the suspicion that there must be a human driver hidden somewhere controlling the car over the internet. But it's just AI, and it's gotten fiendishly better over just the past year or so. All in service of that effortless experience.
\nIn fact, I'd go so far as to call it a luxurious experience. Like you're being escorted by the Queen's own driver to your desired destination. The Queen wouldn't bother with keys or rattles or driving. She'd just get in, be driven, and arrive fresh for a waive. This is the best approximation you can buy for mortal money today.
\nBut then, unlike the old X, it's actually also surprisingly delightful to grab the wheel yourself, hustle it down a hill, lean it into some fun corners, and surge out on that wave of endless torque that electric motors always deliver so well.
\nNo, it's not a Porsche 911, but I'd say it's 90% as fun as a Taycan, at a fraction of the price, in a package that's endlessly more practical, and — did I mention this already? — can drive itself once you're done with the spirited part of the journey.
\nThe Tesla Model Y is a triumph of capitalism. Making the best self-driving technology available to the masses at a price that's accessible to the middle class in a car that even billionaires would appreciate.
\nAndy Warhol captured this egalitarian celebration well with this sentiment: “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”
\nThe Tesla Model Y is an incredible car for nearly everyone.
\n![\"20260710_092822-medium.jpg\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/2c04e16a/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjYyNzc3NzQ0MSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--142c5952aeb65731eed8b29769582bb928ecbb1a553d309050b1c89bed9ae497/20260710_092822-medium.jpg?disposition=attachment\")
Europe is finally waking up from many decades of naive pacifism. While the continent is loath to give America credit, this is largely where it's due, as Trump has pulled back on blanket security guarantees. Well, that and a major war on its doorstep going on four years now.
\nThat's the thing about delusions. Their upkeep seems free until reality intrudes. And that reality has finally gate-crashed the European continent with all the tact and timing of a drunken sailor. So now what?
\n"Buy, buy, buy" was what the Danish prime minister declared last year, as she committed another 50 billion kroner to buy weaponry in that year and this. But buy what and from whom? Sadly, there aren't many top European weapon and equipment makers ready, as the continent's defense industry has been starved of investment for thirty years.
\nAs late as 2018, nearly two-thirds of European investors excluded companies involved in conventional weapons production due to ESG considerations, per Eurosif. And this has been going on since the early 1990s.
\nAs always, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now. And this also applies to the tech industry because the next war will depend on it more than ever.
\nLike drones. They've become the main vector in the war in Ukraine. Fiber-optic cables have covered the battlefield like a spiderweb, and many of the recent advances on the Ukrainian side have been attributed to their superior drone operations.
\nWe need drones in Europe. Lots of them. In all shapes and sizes. Made by European companies, built on open-source platforms, and with local supply chains. And that's exactly what the Danish startup Upteko has been working on for nearly a decade, and is now ready to scale up.
\n
\nSo I invested in Upteko. It's outside my normal, boring invest-in-what-you-know strategy of putting money in Danish SaaS startups, but also not that far away. The future of drones is as much in software as in propulsion. And I know something about that.
But really, it wasn't so much about knowledge as it was motivation. And nobody has brought more of a motivating example to the tech-meets-defense question than Palmer Luckey. His Anduril company is infusing modern weapon-making with the zest and innovation of a Valley startup. It's sorely needed, and deeply inspiring.
\nEurope needs its own Andurils. Not because it can't also continue to buy systems from the Americans, but because a good ally is self-sufficient, equally inventive, and armed to the teeth with a diverse fleet of awesome, native weapons.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-06-19T11:03:38+00:00", "date_published": "2026-06-19T11:03:21+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/european-delusions-danish-drones-a3da0d27", "id": "urn:aggr:item:02a47e48607322bfcde72fda90f085940edd1c4f", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Europe is finally waking up from many decades of naive pacifism. While the continent is loath to give America credit, this is largely where it's due, as Trump has pulled back on blanket security guarantees. Well, that and a major war on…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "European Delusions & Danish Drones", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-06-19-european-delusions-danish-drones/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Rupert Lowe, member of the British Parliament and leader of the Restore Britain party, released The Rape Gang Inquiry yesterday. It details the industrial-scale sexual atrocities committed by predominantly Pakistani Muslims against mostly White British girls in the United Kingdom over decades. It's the stuff of nightmares.
\nIn fact, it's so grim, so vile, and so dark that I can't in good conscience recommend reading the graphic details directly (even just a summary of the accounts is traumatizing). But at the same time, you can't look away either. The report estimates that 250,000 British girls have been victims of these rape gangs over the decades. It's an unimaginable scale of horrors.
\nThe closest comparison to these accounts is the atrocities committed during times of war, but somehow this seems worse: The terror did not come as a result of losing an armed conflict, but aided and abetted by the national institutions sworn to serve and protect. From the report:
\n\n\nPolice forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail.
\nSocial care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers.
\nThe NHS recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to
\n
\ntheir abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care.Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them.
\nTaxi licensing authorities renewed permits for drivers who formed the logistical backbone of the networks and collapsed in the face of organised protests when basic safety measures were proposed.
\n
But that's the collective, general assignment of complicity. The specific examples are so much worse. I promise I won't haunt you with more, but here's just one example from the report:
\n\n\nWhen Fiona's mother called the police to report her daughter missing and mentioned a history of abuse by Asian men, the call handler told her: “You can’t describe them as Asian men because that’s racist. You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” On one occasion, a police officer returned Fiona to the house where the abuse was occurring and told the men to “have fun with her.” On another occasion, police instructed the abusers that if they could persuade Fiona to sign herself out of care, the police would stop bothering them.
\n
Now let me touch on two related topics. First, the BBC reported yesterday that trust in traditional media is plummeting in many places, but the fall in Britain has been particularly steep:
\n\n\nThe research published on Tuesday suggests that public trust worldwide is at 37%, three points down on this time last year. In the UK, it has fallen by five points to 30% - 20 points lower than 10 years ago.
\n
So in 2016, half of Brits had trust in traditional media, like the BBC. Now that's down to 30%. Grim. So imagine my surprise when I couldn't find a single mention of The Rape Gang Inquiry on the BBC's news site from neither yesterday nor today. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce a connection between narrative-driven coverage (and absence of it!) and lower trust.
\nSo a state that not only failed to prevent these sexual atrocities, but in many cases abetted the horrors, now wants to end anonymity online to "protect children", so it can prosecute even more regime critics? The same country that leads the world with 12,000 yearly arrests for online speech already? It's painfully on the nose.
\nIt's tragic what the Brits have had and continue to endure. They deserve so much better. Especially these abused children detailed in Lowe's report. And making them wait much longer is a dangerous cocktail.
\nAbout David Heinemeier Hansson
\n", "date_modified": "2026-06-17T14:21:37+00:00", "date_published": "2026-06-17T14:19:34+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-rape-of-britain-610412f8", "id": "urn:aggr:item:98c476ecfe09806e97180e9f9fba25e6139a3a2d", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Rupert Lowe, member of the British Parliament and leader of the Restore Britain party, released The Rape Gang Inquiry yesterday. It details the industrial-scale sexual atrocities committed by predominantly Pakistani Muslims against mostly…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "The Rape of Britain", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-06-17-the-rape-of-britain/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The great joy of having built a successful business that employs a broad team of talented people is that I get to fish for exactly the kind of problems that most interest me, most of the time.
\nUsually, this coincides well with the needs of the business. When we moved out of the cloud, I spent months getting Kamal off the ground, so we didn't have to get mired in the complexity of Kubernetes. Fun problem to solve!
\nAnd of course, the origin story of Ruby on Rails is that Basecamp gave birth to it all back in 2003. Because I simply wanted Ruby to work well for the web, and we needed a platform to build the business.
\nBut sometimes it's also a bit further afield. We had our big clash with Apple over the App Store's monopoly abuses back in 2020, but it wasn't until 2024 that I severed our exclusivity with the Mac on the engineering side by moving to Linux, and ultimately building Omarchy.
\nI don't always get to choose, of course. There are occasionally urgent problems that just need our, and therefore my, full attention as a company, or humdrum issues that I just happen to be best qualified to tackle. But this is increasingly rare because of all those great people we've managed to assemble at 37signals.
\nAnd that's how it should be! Building a successful business should yield dividends beyond just the financial ones. It should afford you more opportunity to press your comparative advantage, so you spend most of your time on the projects that stimulate a little Call of the Wild.
\nNever to the point of being too good for anything, mind you. Taking out the trash is still everyone's job some of the time. But mostly, I want to be sitting by the pond of interesting problems, fishing for the ones that catch my eye and hook my motivation.
\nWho could wish to retire from that?
\n", "date_modified": "2026-06-03T07:11:51+00:00", "date_published": "2026-06-03T07:10:51+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/a-pond-of-interesting-problems-5f697567", "id": "urn:aggr:item:50fa4dd457a2bad7dc3af823629e895777d75e81", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The great joy of having built a successful business that employs a broad team of talented people is that I get to fish for exactly the kind of problems that most interest me, most of the time. Usually, this coincides well with the needs of…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "A pond of interesting problems", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-06-03-a-pond-of-interesting-problems/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The open source movement spent decades fighting for everyone's right to change software, through free access to code and permissive licenses to release improvements. But at the dawn of the AI revolution, as this mission is finally being broadly fulfilled, it's clear that "everyone" never actually meant everyone to some.
\nSee, all programmers are equal, but some programmers are more equal than others. If you're a programmer being assisted by AI, you're not a real programmer. Therefore you aren't entitled to the same supposedly universal open source rights. Or so the self-serving thinking goes in the growing number of anti-agent camps springing up as part of a modern Luddite movement.
\nThis is a protectionist tale as old as time.
\nAnd the justifications are just as tired: It's about quality! It's about attribution! It's about workers! Spare me. It's about you, your insecurities, and your privileges.
\nHumans have been writing shitty software, with dodgy attribution and plenty of bugs, since five minutes after the profession materialized. Agents aren't perfect, slop is a problem, but giving more people the power to enjoy malleable computers is undoubtedly a huge win for the founding vision of open source.
\nBut as with so many social movements that purport to fight for freedom or equality, this AI backlash reeks of status games, envy, and what Nietzsche called ressentiment: How dare you make or change software without suffering through all that I had to endure learning this trade! This precious power is my reward for enduring the social humiliation of being a nerd!
\nWhat should be celebrated as the spread of computing freedoms is instead condemned because it diminishes the exclusivity of those who possessed it first.
\nDon't succumb to this insular, fearful, protectionist thinking. Programming is evolving. We don't know exactly what the final shape will look like, but giving more people access to the fruits of computing freedoms is worth resisting the temptation to close the gates of participation.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-06-01T14:20:54+00:00", "date_published": "2026-06-01T09:22:27+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-the-agents-democratize-open-source-9fd630a9", "id": "urn:aggr:item:b717005fedb556293bb16aba0cfc833632337124", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The open source movement spent decades fighting for everyone's right to change software, through free access to code and permissive licenses to release improvements. But at the dawn of the AI revolution, as this mission is finally being…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Let the agents democratize open source", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-06-01-let-the-agents-democratize-open-source/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "I've been working on Basecamp for half my life, and nearly my entire professional career in software. The first code was written in the summer of 2003 when I was just 23. Now I'm 46, and we've just released the fifth major version.
\nIt's an incredible update to a service that continues to help about a million users a day avoid dropping the ball when working with others. It's AI accessible, but not agent hysteric. It's still famously easy to use, still executes the basics beautifully, and still focuses on the small to medium-sized teams we've been serving in the Fortune 5,000,000 for decades.
\nHere are just three of my favorite new features in Basecamp 5:
\nLexxy editor: Our new text editor finally brings tables, markdown, and live syntax highlighting for code to Basecamp. Oh, and voice notes. It's built on Meta's Lexical editor toolkit, and it's going to ship as the default for Action Text in the next major version of Rails.
\nKeyboard accessible: After moving to Linux, building Omarchy, and acquiring a taste for mechanical keyboards, I've come to love navigating the computer primarily through hotkeys. So with a lot of effort, Basecamp is now a delight to drive through the keys, and you don't have to be a brainiac to remember them all: just hold down SHIFT, and they're revealed in the interface. SHIFT + S opens the sidebar, ESC moves focus between it and the main page, SHIFT + C starts composing a comment/chat line/answer.
\nThe permanent sidebar: If you live in Basecamp, like I do, it's to stay on top of all the new things that are constantly happening in a busy account, and that's just gotten so much faster with the new permanent sidebar. Before, we had a Hey! menu in the top bar. You'd get a little dot when something was new, then you'd open it, click, and the menu would close. If you had five things that were new, it'd be open-click-close, open-click-close, five times. Being able to zoom through these now with just the return key, tap, tap, tap, and I've read three new things. So good.
\nAnd there's so much more. Jason put together a great summary on the new marketing site, which in itself is brand new too. A back-to-basics design in many ways. As our entire industry is getting swept up in agent hysteria (and I love AI as much as anyone!), we thought it better to focus on the human communication that's the cornerstone of Basecamp. The new site just speaks plainly to that mission and shows you the software right at the top.
\nAnother thing that's back is color, specifically in the logo. Basecamp's clever but flat paperclip logo has been replaced with a modern take of our original rolling mountains. In full three dimensions, with depth and a gradient. Love it.
\nOverall, I'm really proud of what we've built with Basecamp Five. We're inching in on a quarter of a century in service! We still have customers who signed up back in early 2004! This is the kind of legacy that makes me beam, and the new version is just ace.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-05-26T10:52:30+00:00", "date_published": "2026-05-26T10:52:29+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-five-8fcfd2ef", "id": "urn:aggr:item:4201392f6b16a657fb7a91f0bd220008502c7ac7", "image": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/8fcfd2ef/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjU3MjAzNTcyOCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--7ba863db0ccba0e8e022bac36bd47972d417c6432aaf3a346aeb1c48323074d7/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6eyJyZXNpemVfdG9fZmlsbCI6WzEyMDAsNjMwXSwicXVhbGl0eSI6NDAsInN0cmlwIjp0cnVlfSwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--850460abb6619f326eb585ef63fdb0b416ee8bffff0b16dfc60dcb6699d89ebd/screenshot-2026-05-26_12-33-29-medium.jpg", "language": "en-US", "summary": "I've been working on Basecamp for half my life, and nearly my entire professional career in software. The first code was written in the summer of 2003 when I was just 23. Now I'm 46, and we've just released the fifth major version. It's an…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Basecamp Five", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-05-26-basecamp-five/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Do you see the same truth? That's how C.S. Lewis defined the essence of friendship. And that's what we gathered 130 people in New York to honor for Omacon two weeks ago. Seeing the same truth: A love of computers. Bespoke computers. Malleable computers. Our computers.
\nIt's the kind of magic you can only really summon in person. We do our best online, but you instantly realize what an impoverished medium it is for creating real connections once you're all together in the same room.
\nSo that's what we did. We connected. We shared our work, our passion, and our opinions about all these new Linux vibes. It happened in an absolutely gorgeous venue, generously offered for the occasion by Tobi and his event team at Shopify. The space had an almost comedy-club intimacy, with chairs just a few inches from the podium. Thanks to the single-track format, we made the most of that warm atmosphere. I gave the keynote.
\nI also got to meet Prime, TJ, Bjarne, Spencer, and Vaxry for the first time in person. Which is always a bit odd when you've been working together for a while over the internet. It feels so familiar, but like an unfinished agreement. And then, boom, it's signed with a handshake and a smile.
\nSame with getting to meet and talk to a ton of other Omarchy users from all walks of life. Many were programmers, but plenty were not. Some came from other Linux distributions, but most from either Windows or Mac. Everyone shared a passion for computers, though. Not just as instruments of action, but as delightful environments for play, learning, and connection.
\nIt all added up to a massive recharge. I built Omarchy for myself, but sharing it makes it mean so much more. Seeing others enthusiastically embrace it as a starting point for their own Linux adventure is a real boost to the motivation needed to keep making it better. Because there's always more to do: more systems to cover with perfect compatibility, more corners to polish.
\nSo that's what we're going to do, together. Make this distro reach more kindred spirits. Entice those who would love a bespoke, kintsugi system, but don't know where to start. It's never going to be for everyone, but that's also why it works as a beacon for those who choose to share the quest.
\nAbout David Heinemeier Hansson
\n", "date_modified": "2026-04-21T10:56:33+00:00", "date_published": "2026-04-21T10:56:33+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/celebrating-computers-at-omacon-163eb568", "id": "urn:aggr:item:bf555fa96ff751ac2e19667565c614c029c398ac", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Do you see the same truth? That's how C.S. Lewis defined the essence of friendship. And that's what we gathered 130 people in New York to honor for Omacon two weeks ago. Seeing the same truth: A love of computers. Bespoke computers.…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Celebrating computers at Omacon", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-04-21-celebrating-computers-at-omacon/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Open source promised that users would be free to change whatever code they were running. The reality, however, is that hardly any of them ever did — it was simply too hard. Now, with AI, it suddenly isn't.
\nThis is very exciting. Being able to add features to any local open-source application and then use that bespoke fork for your own benefit is an incredible step toward the original open source promise.
\nThis isn't just about regular users, either. Even if you are a programmer, you might not be familiar with the language the application is written in. And even if you are, taking the time to get familiar with any substantial codebase is a tall order. AI is compressing that complexity and making it malleable at a ferocious rate.
\nWhat excites me even more, though, is when this power is applied to the operating system, and thus the entire computer. When you're able to change not just individual applications, but your system's menu bars, your window manager, your notification system, your everything.
\nBut you can only do this on Linux. With Windows and macOS, the core elements of the operating system are owned by the companies that make them. While it's often possible to hack certain aspects, it's far from truly having the malleable computer that Linux allows.
\nI've already seen this a lot in the Omarchy world: users who aren't super technical making the system their own with the help of AI and being utterly delighted by the outcome.
\nAnd while this is still a pretty nerdy thing to do, I don't think it will remain contained to that niche for long. As models get even more powerful, the idea that your system is tied down as a fixed black box is likely to become an archaic notion pretty quickly.
\nAs always, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-04-15T15:06:27+00:00", "date_published": "2026-04-15T15:06:27+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-malleable-computer-7c187a9b", "id": "urn:aggr:item:5c3d4770ac76e0539d5ab7ab2b22d290434fa340", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Open source promised that users would be free to change whatever code they were running. The reality, however, is that hardly any of them ever did — it was simply too hard. Now, with AI, it suddenly isn't. This is very exciting. Being able…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "The malleable computer", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-04-15-the-malleable-computer/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Intel really delivered with Panther Lake. A 2026 Dell XPS 14 using this chipset with an IPS screen can hit just 1.4 watts of idle power draw on Omarchy. That's good enough for over 47 hours!! And in real-world mixed use on another 74-Wh machine, I've seen around 16 hours of battery life. That's a huge jump over the ~6 hours I was getting over the past two years from AMD-powered Framework laptops.
\nTechnically, Intel already had something close to Panther Lake on efficiency with the Lunar Lake chips from last year, but those were quite slow on any multi-core workloads (like a developer would need). With Panther Lake (358H), I'm getting 17,500 on Geekbench 6, which is about 10% faster than the already excellent AMD HX370, and a match for Apple's M5.
\nApple remains ahead on single-core performance, but even there, Panther Lake is on par with an M3. And I don't remember anyone complaining that those were too slow. What everyone has been pining for was better battery life, and now we got it. On a machine with excellent integrated graphics that are good enough to play a ton of triple-A games no less!
\nBut we're getting more than that. The PC makers are getting their act together on all fronts. Haptic touchpads on level with Apple's is now standard on both high-end Dell and Asus laptops. Many of the new machines also have tandem OLED screens that blow even the nice micro-LED options from Apple out of the water. And PCs are now somehow both sleeker and slimmer than the MacBooks.
\nJonathan Ive knew this, he was just a bit ahead of the components, and he was willing to sacrifice reliability to get to what wasn't possible back then. But now it is, and the PC makers are taking full advantage.
\nNow I know that any comparison between Macs and PCs are moot for most people. There's not a lot of cross-shopping going on these days. If you're locked into the Apple walled garden, it's hard to untangle yourself, so most just continue to buy whatever their team offers.
\nBut for the few who are either fed up with Apple in general, macOS Tahoe in particular, or just want to try a whole new way of computing with Omarchy, it's fantastic that battery life is no longer a blocker. It's been the #1 reason cited by folks who've been interested in trying Omarchy, but felt like they couldn't let go of Apple's efficiency advantage. Now that's largely gone.
\nI also just love a good turnaround story. Intel had been on the ropes for years. Now they have a fantastic integrated GPU that's compatible with all the tens of thousands of PC games on the market, a super-efficient CPU that's a match for an M5 on multi-core and an M3 on single-core performance, and a range of PC makers finally taking the fight directly to Apple on touchpads, build quality, and weight.
\nThese new Panther Lake CPUs are made in Arizona too, btw. With the world as it is, I think any American should breathe a sigh of relief that if things get spicy with Taiwan, there's more to frontier computing than a TSMC plant within a short reach of China. There's still more work to be done on that front (as Intel CPU cores still come from TSMC!), but it's a huge step in the right direction.
\nPersonally, I'm just thrilled that competition is lifting all boats. Apple gave the entire laptop industry a huge wake-up call in 2020 with the introduction of the M chips. Intel's former CEO, Pat Gelsinger, saw the threat clearly, kicked off the 18A plan, but sadly didn't last long enough in the top seat to see his bet pay off with Panther Lake. The rest of us now benefit from his boldness.
\nI'm also thrilled to see both Dell and Intel leaning into Linux. Omarchy 3.5 ships with every possible tweak to make these Panther Lake chips perform at their best, and that was only possible because Michael Dell assigned a team to work on it. So much love to Mr Dell for letting us borrow the brains and commits from senior engineers within both his company and Intel to ship this big new release.
\nIf you've been waiting on the sidelines for a laptop that can run Omarchy and still get amazing battery life, now is your magic moment. Give the new Dell XPS series, or any of the other laptops shipping with Panther Lake, a try. I think you'll be as impressed as I've been.
\n![\"image.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/4bd731f1/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjUxMjIzODcxOSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--a36f27af72be83d96eb34e30ed2a1aab92779d0527af843f981e271f6e004184/image.png?disposition=attachment\")
In the past 18 months, we've experimented with a ton of AI-infused features at 37signals. Fizzy had all sorts of attempts. As did Basecamp. But as Microsoft and many others have realized, it's not that easy to make something that's actually good and would welcomed by users. So we didn't ship.
\nIn the meantime, agents have emerged has the killer app for AI. Not only are LLMs much smarter when they can check their thinking using tools, but the file system also gives them the memory implant they needed to learn between prompts. And now they can actually do stuff!
\nNot only can you have your agent look through everything in Basecamp, summarize whatever you need, but it can also set up to-do lists, post message updates, chat with humans and clankers alike, upload reference files, and arrange a project schedule. Anything you can do in Basecamp, agents can now do too.
\nThis becomes extra powerful when you combine Basecamp with all the other tools you might be using that are also agent accessible. For software development, you can use the MCP from Sentry to trawl through major sources of bugs, then have the agent summarize that in a message for Basecamp. Or you have it download, analyze, and highlight key customer complaints by giving it access to your help desk system.
\nAll this was possible in the past with APIs, hand-written integrations, and human data scientists. But it was cumbersome, slow, and expensive, so most people just didn't. A vanishingly small portion of Basecamp customers have ever directly interacted with our API. But agents? I think adoption is going to be swift.
\nNot because everyone is going to run OpenCode, Claude Code, or Gemini CLI. But because agents are going to be incorporated into ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and all the other mainstream interfaces who were collectively embarrassed by OpenClaw's meteoric ascent and popularity very quickly. There's a huge demand out there for a personal agent that can act as your private executive assistant.
\nThis is where the puck is going, and we're skating to meet it with agent accessibility across the board. Basecamp is first, Fizzy is next, and we'll hit HEY before long too. Revamped APIs, comprehensive CLIs, and the skills to use them whatever your harness or claws look like.
\nAbout David Heinemeier Hansson
\n", "date_modified": "2026-03-25T17:37:25+00:00", "date_published": "2026-03-25T17:37:25+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/basecamp-becomes-agent-accessible-3ae6b949", "id": "urn:aggr:item:04998d5b48bcca350c138842295e7541514a6538", "language": "en-US", "summary": "In the past 18 months, we've experimented with a ton of AI-infused features at 37signals. Fizzy had all sorts of attempts. As did Basecamp. But as Microsoft and many others have realized, it's not that easy to make something that's…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Basecamp becomes agent accessible", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-03-25-basecamp-becomes-agent-accessible/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The Danish election is tomorrow. One of the central themes in the incumbent campaign has been a proposed wealth tax. The fig leaf for this proposal was "smaller classrooms in the early grades", but that quickly fell off, and the debate centered on "inequality". And it's true that inequality is a problem in Denmark: There's not nearly enough!
\nI know that sounds sacrilegious. Even most of the business-friendly press and parties in Denmark dance around this topic. Which makes political sense because the word "inequality" leads most people to think of poverty and destitution. But that's not the reality in the little kingdom that could.
\nDenmark has an enormous state apparatus (half of GDP and a third of all workers!) that offers equal access to everything from health care to education and a million programs in between. It could surely be slimmed and trimmed, but on the whole, it works remarkably well. The average Dane is incredibly well cared for by any international standard (high-trust society, hurray!).
\nBy those same standards, it's the 8th most equal country in the world on income, as measured by the Gini coefficient (0.28). But this is where the numbers start spellbinding the debate. Because the Danish Gini coefficient perversely "degrades" if new businesses succeed, as any time successful founders and high-paid employees earning incomes above the median "worsen" inequality.
\nThis is obviously nonsense. When the pie gets bigger, it gets better for all, as long as nobody is robbed of their existing slice. Denmark should clearly want new successful businesses! It should love to see founders reap big rewards when the risks pay off. It should celebrate early employees making fortunes on stock grants. But all too often, it just doesn't.
\nJust to put it on a pin: Danes hate flashy cars with a passion that stretches back much further than the current green excuses. But buying a $300,000 Ferrari in Denmark is one of the most patriotic things you can possibly do! You'll end up paying almost three times the price for the privilege, and sending 2/3s of that to the treasury in taxes. Truly a contribution to the common cause worthy of admiration, not scorn!
\nBut because the debate around inequality is anchored in a fixed-pie paradigm, scorn is all you're likely to get. Anyone who does well in Denmark is immediately suspected of having succeeded at the expense of others. Probably through some form of nefarious exploitation, even if we can't prove what?! There is a core national politics of grievance and envy.
\nBut, however human that may be, the future progress and prosperity of the country depends on rejecting this zero-sum delusional dogma. The Danish economy is currently doing well compared to the rest of the EU, but it's dangerously dependent on a handful of vintage corporations pulling the bulk of the load.
\nThis simply has to change if the Danes wish to retain their high standards of living going forward. No corporation lasts forever. Novo Nordisk was Europe's most valuable company at the start of last year, now it's worth half that, and is out of the top ten. And who knows what the closing of the Hormuz Strait will do to Maersk. These two companies alone represent roughly a quarter of all Denmark's exports!
\nMeanwhile, new business formation just hit an all-time low. And only a tiny portion of the big employers in Denmark were created in the last thirty years. And thus, almost all the wealth that funds the highly-prized welfare state is coming from really old companies. Many of them over a hundred years old.
\nThis is wonderful in many ways. The Danes should be rightfully proud to host Maersk (1904), Novo (1923), Vestas (1945), Lego (1932), and other international heavy-weights. But it can't rely on this aging corporate vintage to forever bear fruit for tomorrow.
\nTomorrow needs to be tended to by planting new seeds. New companies. New growth. New capital. And that's just not going to happen if the Danish state declares itself at war with capital formation or accumulation. It should be so lucky to have more rich people, with more capital, and the talent to deploy it toward a better, shared future (or spend it on heavily-taxed Ferraris!).
\nThe ballot boxes open tomorrow morning. It's predicted to be a close one. Fingers crossed for a prosperous choice.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-03-23T17:35:04+00:00", "date_published": "2026-03-23T17:35:04+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/denmark-desperately-needs-more-inequality-8e84a8d0", "id": "urn:aggr:item:6f978fa57810b7c085260fccebf16c53a8f980a9", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The Danish election is tomorrow. One of the central themes in the incumbent campaign has been a proposed wealth tax. The fig leaf for this proposal was \"smaller classrooms in the early grades\", but that quickly fell off, and the debate…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Denmark desperately needs more inequality", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-03-23-denmark-desperately-needs-more-inequality/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The original concept for ONCE sought to sell self-hostable web apps for a one-time fee. That didn't work. Sure, we recouped the investment on Campfire, our chat app, but that was it. You gotta listen when the market tells you what it wants! And it didn't seem to want to pay for self-hosted web apps in a one-off way.
\nSo we set Campfire, Writebook, and now Fizzy free by releasing them all as open source with a permissive license. That worked! Tons of people have been running these apps on their own servers, contributing code back, and learning how we build real production applications at 37signals.
\nNow we're doubling down on the gift and adding an integrated way to run all these apps, and your own vibe-coded adventures too, on a brand-new application server we're also calling ONCE.
\nIf you twist my arm, I can make that spell "Open Network Container Executor", but we don't even have to go there. Once is just a cool word, we already own the domain, and it's running all the original applications released under that banner as free and open-source installations. That's good enough!
\nThe pitch here is that installing a whole suite of applications on your own server should be dead easy. The original ONCE model wanted a dedicated box or VM per app, which was just cumbersome and costly to maintain. Now you can use a single machine — even your laptop! — to run everything all at once.
\nONCE gives you a beautiful terminal interface to track application metrics, like RAM + CPU usage, as well as basic visitor + request/second counts. It also gives you zero-downtime upgrades and scheduled backups. It's meant to be able to run all the infrastructure apps you'd need, like our full suite and all the ones your AI agents will soon be building for you.
\nAbout David Heinemeier Hansson
\n", "date_modified": "2026-03-16T18:03:01+00:00", "date_published": "2026-03-16T18:03:01+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/once-again-3e99f755", "id": "urn:aggr:item:6a5badbd431217100f68874a672fc697da63c63c", "image": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/3e99f755/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjQ4NzYwMTQxMywicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--33472438a3a21d29b04c08c6c49342c1302bdea3ecaaba0d210acba2d7f9a330/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6eyJyZXNpemVfdG9fZmlsbCI6WzEyMDAsNjMwXSwicXVhbGl0eSI6NDAsInN0cmlwIjp0cnVlfSwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--850460abb6619f326eb585ef63fdb0b416ee8bffff0b16dfc60dcb6699d89ebd/screenshot-2026-03-16_18-32-42.png", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The original concept for ONCE sought to sell self-hostable web apps for a one-time fee. That didn't work. Sure, we recouped the investment on Campfire, our chat app, but that was it. You gotta listen when the market tells you what it…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "ONCE (Again)", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-03-16-once-again/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The vibes around Linux are changing fast. Companies of all shapes and sizes are paying fresh attention. The hardware game on x86 is rapidly improving. And thanks to OpenCode and Claude Code, terminal user interfaces (TUIs) are suddenly everywhere. It's all this and Omarchy that we'll be celebrating in New York City on April 10 at the Shopify SoHo Space for the first OMACON!
\nWe've got an incredible lineup of speakers coming. The creator of Hyprland, Vaxry, will be there. Along with ThePrimeagen and TJ DeVries. You'll see OpenCode creator Dax Raad. Omarchy power contributors Ryan Hughes and Bjarne Øverli. As well as Chris Powers (Typecraft) and myself as Linux superfans. All packed into a single day of short sessions, plenty of mingle time, and some good food.
\nTickets go on sale tomorrow (February 19) at 10am EST. We only have room for 130 attendees total, so I imagine the offered-at-cost $299 tickets will go quickly. But if you can't manage to snatch a ticket in time, we'll also be recording everything, so you won't be left out entirely.
\nBut there is just something special about being together in person about a shared passion. I've felt the intensity of that three years in a row now with Rails World. There's an endless amount of information and instruction available online, but a sense of community and connection is far more scarce. We nerds need this.
\nWe also need people to JUST DO THINGS. Like kick off a fresh Linux distribution together with over three hundred contributors so far all leaning boldly into aesthetics, ergonomics, and that omakase spirit.
\nOmarchy only came about last summer, now we're seeing 50,000 ISO downloads a week, 30,000 people on the Discord, and now our very first exclusive gathering in New York City. This is open source at its best. People from all over, coming together, making cool shit.
\n(Oh, and thanks to Shopify and Tobi for hosting. You gotta love when a hundred-plus billion dollar company like this is run by an uber nerd who can just sign off on doing something fun and cool for the community without any direct plausible payback.)
\n![\"opengraph.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/e6ee93cb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjQ1NjEzMzk2MSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--b9279c009da7b624e34080687903ac6d8841b02e2ea68541ca920b1e84e581fa/opengraph.png?disposition=attachment\")
With OpenClaw you're giving AI its own machine, long-term memory, reminders, and persistent execution. The model is no longer confined to a prompt-response cycle, but able to check its own email, Basecamp notifications, and whatever else you give it access to on a running basis. It's a sneak peek at a future where everyone has a personal agent assistant, and it's fascinating.
\nI set up mine on a Proxmox virtual machine to be fully isolated from my personal data and logins. (But there are people out there running wild and giving OpenClaw access to everything on their own machine, despite the repeated warnings that this is more than a little risky!).
\nThen I tried to see just how little help it would need navigating our human-centric digital world. I didn't install any skills, any MCPs, or give it access to any APIs. Zero machine accommodations. I just started off with a simple prompt: "Sign up for Fizzy, so we have a place to collaborate. Here's the invite link."
\nKef, as I named my new agent, dutifully went to Fizzy to sign up, but was immediately stumped by needing an email address. It asked me what to do, and I replied: "Just go to hey.com and sign up for a new account." So it did. In a single try. No errors, no steering, no accommodations.
\nAfter it had procured its own email address, it continued on with the task of signing up for Fizzy. And again, it completed the mission without any complications. Now we had a shared space to collaborate.
\nSo, as a test, I asked it to create a new board for business ideas, and add five cards with short suggestions, including providing a background image sourced from the web to describe the idea. And it did. Again, zero corrections. Perfect execution.
\nI then invited it to Basecamp by just adding it as I would any other user. That sent off an email to Kef's new HEY account, which it quickly received, then followed the instructions, got signed up, and greeted everyone in the chat room of the AI Labs project it was invited to.
\n![\"image.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/9f86fa71/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjQ0MDI4ODUyMSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--09074eb1dc1238265386e0a92143ea009f4e13cf31ab9eb6a5dfb15466aedd45/image.png?disposition=attachment\")
I'm thoroughly impressed. All the agent accommodations, like MCPs/CLIs/APIs, probably still have a place for a bit longer, as doing all this work cold is both a bit slow and token-intensive. But I bet this is just a temporary crutch.
\nAnd while I ran this initial experiment on Claude's Opus 4.5, I later reran most of it on the Chinese open-weight model Kimi K2.5, and it too was able to get it all right (though it was a fair bit slower when provisioned through OpenRouter).
\nEverything is changing so fast in the world of AI right now, but if I was going to skate to where the puck is going to be, it'd be a world where agents, like self-driving cars, don't need special equipment, like LIDAR or MCPs, to interact with the environment. The human affordances will be more than adequate.
\nWhat a time to be alive.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-02-05T15:32:52+00:00", "date_published": "2026-02-05T15:30:07+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/clankers-with-claws-9f86fa71", "id": "urn:aggr:item:ecf1efb06f974dbb3aef87b2f02ec73f7cfa45d4", "image": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/9f86fa71/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjQ0MDI4ODUyMSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--09074eb1dc1238265386e0a92143ea009f4e13cf31ab9eb6a5dfb15466aedd45/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6eyJyZXNpemVfdG9fZmlsbCI6WzEyMDAsNjMwXSwicXVhbGl0eSI6NDAsInN0cmlwIjp0cnVlfSwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--850460abb6619f326eb585ef63fdb0b416ee8bffff0b16dfc60dcb6699d89ebd/image.png", "language": "en-US", "summary": "With OpenClaw you're giving AI its own machine, long-term memory, reminders, and persistent execution. The model is no longer confined to a prompt-response cycle, but able to check its own email, Basecamp notifications, and whatever else…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Clankers with claws", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-02-05-clankers-with-claws/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "I fully understand the nostalgia for real ownership of physical-media games. I grew up on cassette tapes (C64 + Amstrad 464!), floppy disks (C64 5-1/4" then Amiga 3-1/2"), cartridges, and CDs. I occasionally envy the retro gamers on YouTube with an entire wall full of such physical media. But do you know what I like more than collecting? Playing! Anywhere. Anything. Anytime.
\nWe went through the same coping phases with movies and music. Yes, vinyl had a resurgence, but it's still a tiny sliver of hours listened. Same too with 4K Blue-rays. Almost everyone just listens to Spotify or watches on Netflix these days. It's simply cheaper, faster, and, thus, better.
\nNot "better" in some abstract philosophical way (ownership vs rent) or even in a concrete technical way (bit rates), but in a practical way. Paying $20/month for unlimited music and the same again for a broad selection of shows and movies is clearly a deal most consumers are happy to make.
\nSo why not video games? Well, because it just wasn't good enough! Netflix tried for casual gaming, but I didn't hear much of that after the announcement. Google Stadia appears to have been just a few years ahead of reality (eerie how often that happens for big G, like with both AI and AR!) as they shut down their service already.
\nNVIDIA, though, kept working, and its GeForce NOW service is actually, finally kinda amazing! I had tried it back in the late 2010s, and just didn't see anything worth using back then. Maybe my internet was too slow, maybe the service just wasn't good enough yet. But then I tried it again a few days ago, just after NVIDIA shipped the native GFN client for Linux, and holy smokes!!
\nYou can legitimately play Fortnite in 2880x1800 at 120 fps through a remote 4080, and it looks incredible. Yes, there's a little input lag, but it's shockingly, surprisingly playable on a good internet connection. And that's with the hardest possible genre: competitive shooters! If you play racing games like Forza Horizon or story-mode games like Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, you can barely tell!
\nThis is obviously a great option for anyone with a modest computer that can't run the latest triple-A titles, but also for Linux gamers who don't have access to run the cheat-protection software required for Fortnite and a few other games.
\nAnd, like Spotify and Netflix, it's pretty competitively priced. It's $20/month for access to that 4080-tier. You'd quickly spend $2,000+ on a gaming rig with a 4080, so this isn't a half bad deal: it's a payback of 100 months, and by then you'd probably want a 6080 anyway. Funny how NVIDIA is better at offering the promise of cheap cloud costs than the likes of AWS!
\nAnyway, I've been very impressed with NVIDIA GeForce NOW. We're going to bake the Linux installer straight into the next version of Omarchy, so you can just go to Install > Gaming > NVIDIA GeForce NOW to get going (just like we have such options for Steam and Minecraft).
\nBut of course seeing Fortnite running in full graphics on that remote 4080 made me hungry for even more. I've been playing Fortnite every week for the last five years or so with the kids, but the majority of my gameplay has actually been on tablet. A high-end tablet, like an iPad M5, can play the game with good-for-mobile graphics at 120 Hz. It's smooth, it's easy, and the kids and I can lounge on the couch and play together. Good Family Fun! Not peak visual fidelity, though.
\nSo after the NVIDIA GeForce NOW experience, I found a way to use the same amazing game streaming technology at home through a local-server solution called Apollo and a client called Moonlight. This allowed me to turn my racing-sim PC that's stuck downstairs into a cloud-like remote gaming service that I can access anywhere on the local network, so I can borrow its 4090 to play 120-fps, ultra-settings Fortnite with zero perceivable input lag on any computer in the house.
\nThe NVIDIA cloud streaming is very impressive, but the local-server version of the same is mind-blowing. I'm mostly using the Asus G14 laptop as a client, so Fortnite looks incredible with those ultra, high-resolution settings on its OLED, but unlike when you use that laptop's built-in graphics card, the machine stays perfectly cool and silent pulling a meager 18 watts. And the graphics are of course a lot nicer.
\nThe Moonlight client is available for virtually every platform: Mac, iOS, Android, and of course Linux. That means no need to dual boot to enjoy the best games at the highest fidelity. No need for a honking big PC on my primary desk. I did not know this was an option!!
\nWhether you give NVIDIA's cloud gaming setup a try or repurpose a local gaming PC for the same, you're in for a real treat of what's possible with streaming Fortnite on ultra settings at 120 fps on Linux (or even Mac!). GG, NVIDIA!
\n![\"fortnite-apollo-4090.jpg\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/b8a19c57/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjQzNzY2NzAxNywicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--d90a498e931bfcb76593b0e979e9d332adef7cec875e61b70678cdec1a1e266a/fortnite-apollo-4090.jpg?disposition=attachment\")
At the end of last year, AI agents really came alive for me. Partly because the models got better, but more so because we gave them the tools to take their capacity beyond pure reasoning. Now coding agents are controlling the terminal, running tests to validate their work, searching the web for documentation, and using web services with skills we taught them in plain English. Reality is fast catching the hype!
\nThis is all very evident if you've tried to employ any of the new models — especially Claude Opus 4.5, Codex 5, Gemini 3, and even the Chinese open-weight models like MiniMax M2.1 and GLM-4.7 — in one of the modern terminal harnesses that give them access to all these autonomous powers. The code being produced by this new breed of AI is leagues ahead of where their predecessors were at the beginning of 2025.
\nI've thoroughly enjoyed putting them all to work in OpenCode, which is a terminal interface for coding agents that allows you to seamlessly switch between all of the models, capture your sessions for sharing, and simply looks astounding when theme-matched with the rest of Omarchy (where we're making it a default in the next version!).
\nSee, I never really cared much for the in-editor experience of having AI autocomplete your code as you were writing it. That was the original format pioneered by GitHub's Copilot and Cursor, but it left me cold. When I code, I want to finish my own thoughts and sentences. That was the sentiment I expressed on the Lex Fridman podcast last summer.
\nBut with these autonomous agents, the experience is very different. It's more like working on a team and less like working with an overly-zealous pair programmer who can't stop stealing the keyboard to complete the code you were in the middle of writing. With a team of agents, they're doing their work autonomously, and I just review the final outcome, offer guidance when asked, and marvel at how this is possible at all.
\nYes, I'm ready to give the current crop of AI agents a promotion. They're no longer just here to help me learn, answer my questions, or check my work. They're fully capable of producing production-grade contributions to real-life code bases.
\nYet pure vibe coding remains an aspirational dream for professional work for me, for now. Supervised collaboration, though, is here today. I've worked alongside agents to fix small bugs, finish substantial features, and get several drafts on major new initiatives. The paradigm shift finally feels real.
\nNow, it all depends on what you're working on, and what your expectations are. The hype train keeps accelerating, and if you bought the pitch that we're five minutes away from putting all professional programmers out of a job, you'll be disappointed.
\nI'm nowhere close to the claims of having agents write 90%+ of the code, as I see some boast about online. I don't know what code they're writing to hit those rates, but that's way off what I'm able to achieve, if I hold the line on quality and cohesion.
\nBut I'll forgive folks for getting excited! Because you don't have to connect many future dots on the current trend line to get dizzy by the prospects. The leaps of improvement that AI agents took in 2025 is simply incredible. This is the most exciting thing we've made computers do since we connected them to the internet back in the '90s. So what might things look like in 2026 or 2027? I get the exuberance.
\nI also get that some programmers are eager to tune it all out. The hype drones on relentlessly, the most fantastical claims are still far off from being substantiated, and there's real uncertainty about where all this will leave the profession in the future. But that's still not reason enough to miss out on this incredible moment in human and computing history!
\nYou gotta get in there. See where we're at now for yourself. Download OpenCode, throw some real work at Opus or the others, and relish the privilege of being alive during the days we taught the machines how to think.
\n", "date_modified": "2026-01-07T12:19:47+00:00", "date_published": "2026-01-07T09:03:58+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/promoting-ai-agents-3ee04945", "id": "urn:aggr:item:6e8b22b76ad7fb6385c201a5ade0047bdac4d674", "language": "en-US", "summary": "At the end of last year, AI agents really came alive for me. Partly because the models got better, but more so because we gave them the tools to take their capacity beyond pure reasoning. Now coding agents are controlling the terminal,…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Promoting AI agents", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2026-01-07-promoting-ai-agents/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "One of my favorite parts of the early web was how easy it was to see how the front-end was built. Before View Source was ruined by minification, transpiling, and bundling, you really could just right-click on any web page and learn how it was all done. It was glorious.
\nBut even back then, this only ever applied to the front-end. At least with commercial applications, the back-end was always kept proprietary. So learning how to write great web applications still meant piecing together lessons from books, tutorials, and hello-world-style code examples, not from production-grade commercial software.
\nThe O'Saasy License seeks to remedy that. It's basically the do-whatever-you-want MIT license, but with the commercial rights to run the software as a service (SaaS) reserved for the copyright holder, thus encouraging more code to be open source while allowing the original creators to see a return on their investment.
\nWe need more production-grade code to teach juniors and LLMs alike. A view source that extends to the back-end along with the open source invitation to fix bugs, propose features, and run the system yourself for free (if your data requirements or interests maks that a sensible choice over SaaS).
\nThis is what we're doing with Fizzy, but now we've also given the O'Saasy License a home to call its own at osaasy.dev. The license is yours to download and apply to any project where it makes sense. I hope to read a lot more production-grade SaaS code as a result!
\n![\"osassy-license.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/336c5c8f/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM4MjYzMTM0NCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--ca8e8c2eaa291c28171287ab2f86d9dd48d1e098ce75cce24e3eef1507fccab7/osassy-license.png?disposition=attachment\")
About David Heinemeier Hansson
\n", "date_modified": "2025-12-16T19:59:04+00:00", "date_published": "2025-12-16T19:59:04+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-o-saasy-license-336c5c8f", "id": "urn:aggr:item:f7be85ffcddc1b7f2ea52867e9eadba1e07cefaa", "image": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/336c5c8f/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM4MjYzMTM0NCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--ca8e8c2eaa291c28171287ab2f86d9dd48d1e098ce75cce24e3eef1507fccab7/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6eyJyZXNpemVfdG9fZmlsbCI6WzEyMDAsNjMwXSwicXVhbGl0eSI6NDAsInN0cmlwIjp0cnVlfSwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--850460abb6619f326eb585ef63fdb0b416ee8bffff0b16dfc60dcb6699d89ebd/osassy-license.png", "language": "en-US", "summary": "One of my favorite parts of the early web was how easy it was to see how the front-end was built. Before View Source was ruined by minification, transpiling, and bundling, you really could just right-click on any web page and learn how it…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "The O'Saasy License", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2025-12-16-the-o-saasy-license/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "The gap between Europe's self-image and reality has grown into a chasm of delulu. One that's threatening to swallow the continent's future whole, as dangerous dependencies on others for energy, security, software, and manufacturing stack up to strangle Europe's sovereignty. But its current political class continues to double down on everything that hasn't worked for the past forty years.
\nBut you can see why many politicians in Europe are eager to punish X for giving Europeans a social media that doesn't cooperate with its crackdown on wrongthink. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is personally responsible for 5,000(!!) cases pursuing his subjects for insults online, which has led to house raids for utterances as banal as calling him a "filthy drunk".
\nIt's against this backdrop — thousands of yearly arrests for banal insults or crass opposition to government policies — that some Europeans still try to convince themselves they're the true champions of free speech and freedom of the press. Delulu indeed.
\nThat's primarily because Europe basically stopped creating new, large companies more than half a century ago. So as the likes of Nokia died off, there was nobody new to replace them. In the last fifty years, the number and size of new European companies worth $10 billion or more is alarmingly small:
\n![\"us-v-eu-bubbles.jpeg\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/8b10e7cb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM3MjQ2NTQ0MCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--aa0ea14b83851d218e68fa686bae6c83b2efe673b6368c5e4a35cbc6e0e4c124/us-v-eu-bubbles.jpeg?disposition=attachment\")
So cue the talk about security. European leaders are incensed by getting excluded from the discussion about ending the war in Ukraine, which is currently just happening between America and Russia directly. But they only have themselves to thank for a seat on the sidelines. Here's a breakdown of the NATO spending by country:
\n![\"nato-budget.jpeg\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/8b10e7cb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM3MjQ2NjIxOCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--3150bb6cd5d81a9064c1e3a932365d702aa01f537a296d7c5cef7e68981331b3/nato-budget.jpeg?disposition=attachment\")
This used to be a joke to Europeans. That America would spend so much on its military might. Since the invasion of Ukraine, there's been a lot less laughing, and now the new official NATO target for member states is to spend 5% of GDP on defense.
\nBut even this target fails to acknowledge the fact that even if European countries should meet their new obligations (and currently only Poland among the larger EU countries is even close), they'd still lag far behind America, simply because the EU is comparatively a much smaller and shrinking economic zone.
\nIn 2025, the combined GDP for the European Union was $20 trillion. America was fifty percent larger with a GDP of $30 trillion. And the gap continues to widen, as EU growth is pegged at around 1% in 2024 compared to almost 3% for the US.
\nNow this is usually when the euro cope begins to screech the loudest. Trying every which way to explain that actually Europe is a better place to live than America, despite having a GDP per capita that's almost half.
\nAnd on a subjective level, that might well be true! There are plenty of reasons to prefer living in Europe, but that doesn't offset the fact that America is simply a vastly richer country, and that matters when it comes to everything from commercial dominance to military power.
\nBut it's the trajectory that's most damning. In 2008, Europe was on near-parity in GDP with America! But if the 1% vs 3% growth-rate disparity continues for another decade, America will grow its economy by another third to $40 trillion, while Europe will grow just 10% to $22 trillion. Making the American economy nearly twice as large as the European one. Yikes.
\nThese should all be sobering numbers to any European. Whether it's the 10,000 yearly arrests in the UK for social media posts or the risk of an economy that's half the size of the American one in a decade.
\nBut Europe isn't doomed to fulfill this tragic destiny. It's full of some of the most creative, capable, and ambitious people in the world (like the fifth of US startup unicorns with European founders!). But they need much better reasons to stay than what the EU (and now a separate UK) is currently giving them.
\nLike drastically lower energy costs to for a competitive industrial base and to power the AI revolution, so best we quickly revive European nuclear ambitions. Like an immigration policy designed to rival America's cherry-picking of the world's best, rather than mass immigration from low-average-IQ regions of net-negative contributors to the economy (and society). Like dropping the censorship ambitions and bureaucratic boondoggles like the DSA. Like actually offering a European internal market for remote labor and a unified stock exchange for listings.
\nThere are plenty of paths to take that do not end in a low-growth, censorious regime that continues to export many of its best brains to America and elsewhere. So: make haste, the shadows lengthen.
\n", "date_modified": "2025-12-09T15:05:06+00:00", "date_published": "2025-12-09T12:49:21+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-is-weak-and-delusional-but-not-doomed-8b10e7cb", "id": "urn:aggr:item:6cdb0448865558703b29f1fd466e77ef088f1d8d", "image": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/8b10e7cb/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM3MjQ2NTQ0MCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--aa0ea14b83851d218e68fa686bae6c83b2efe673b6368c5e4a35cbc6e0e4c124/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6eyJyZXNpemVfdG9fZmlsbCI6WzEyMDAsNjMwXSwicXVhbGl0eSI6NDAsInN0cmlwIjp0cnVlfSwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--850460abb6619f326eb585ef63fdb0b416ee8bffff0b16dfc60dcb6699d89ebd/us-v-eu-bubbles.jpeg", "language": "en-US", "summary": "The gap between Europe's self-image and reality has grown into a chasm of delulu. One that's threatening to swallow the continent's future whole, as dangerous dependencies on others for energy, security, software, and manufacturing stack…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Europe is weak and delusional (but not doomed)", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2025-12-09-europe-is-weak-and-delusional-but-not-doomed/" }, { "authors": [ { "name": "David Heinemeier Hansson" } ], "content_html": "Kanban is a simple, practical approach to visually managing processes and backlogs by moving work cards from one progress column to another. Toyota came up with it to track their production lines back in the middle of the 20th century, but it's since been applied to all sorts of industries with great effect. And Fizzy is our new fun, modern take on it in digital form.
\nWe're certainly not the first to take a swing at this, not even for software development. Since the early 2000s, there's been a movement to use the Kanban concept to track bugs, issues, and ideas in our industry. And countless attempts to digitize the concept over the years.
\nBut as with so much other software, good ideas can grow cumbersome and unwieldy surprisingly quickly. Fizzy is a fresh reset of an old idea.
\nWe need more of that.
\nVery little software is ever the final word on solving interesting problems. Even products that start out with great promise and simplicity tend to accumulate cruft and complexity over time. A healthy ecosystem needs a recurring cycle of renewal.
\nWe've taken this mission to heart not just with Fizzy's fun, colorful, and modern implementation of the Kanban concept, but also in its distribution.
\nFizzy is available as a service we run where you get 1,000 cards for free, and then it's $20/month for unlimited usage. But we're also giving you access to the entire code base, and invite enterprising individuals and companies to run their own instance totally free of charge.
\nThis is done under the O'Saasy License, which is basically the do-whatever-you-want-just-don't-sue MIT License, but with a carve-out that reserves the commercialization rights to run Fizzy as SaaS for us as the creators. That means it's not technically Open Source™, but the source sure is open, and you can find it on our public GitHub repository.
\nThat open source is what we run too. So new features or bugs fixes accepted on GitHub will make it into both our Fizzy SaaS offering and what anyone can run on their own hardware. We've already had a handful of contributions go live like this!
\nUltimately, it's our plan to let data flow freely between the SaaS and the local installations. You'll be able to start an account on your own instance, and then, if you'd rather we just run it for you, take that data with you into the managed setup. Or the other way around!
\nIn an age where SaaS companies come and go, pivot one way or the other, I think it's a great reassurance that the source code is freely available, and that any work put into a SaaS account is portable to your own installation later.
\nI'm also just a huge fan of being able to View Source. Traditionally, that's been reserved to the front end (and even that has been disappearing due to the scourge of minimization, transpiling, and bundling), but I'm usually even more interested in seeing how things are built on the backend. Fizzy allows you full introspection into that. Including the entire history of how the product was built, pull request by pull request. It's a great way to learn how modern Rails applications are put together!
\nSo please give Fizzy a spin. Whether you're working on software, with a need to track those bugs and feature requests, or you're in an entirely different business and need a place for your particular issues and ideas. Fizzy is a fresh, fun way to manage it all, Kanban style. Enjoy!
\n![\"fizzy.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/54ac41b6/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM2NDU3MTQ5MCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--4969ef7259712db31f434c84f2a2555135eda76c136d598ede3ae49e359c6edc/fizzy.png?disposition=attachment\")
![\"fizzy2.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/54ac41b6/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM2NDU3MzIxNywicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--1160428d807468a171f4f7a152b81484af3037379c87ee4108c0ce534899084e/fizzy2.png?disposition=attachment\")
![\"fizzy3.png\"](\"https://world.hey.com/dhh/54ac41b6/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjM2NDU3NDY0NSwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ--23fc5faf73217545bea98ede55a86c4b9531d61b60f97143f4a1e610f8331687/fizzy3.png?disposition=attachment\")
Black Friday is usually when ecommerce sets new records. This has certainly been true for Shopify through most of its existence. So much so that the company spends months in advance preparing for The Big Day(s). You'd think after more than twenty years, though, that things would have leveled out. But you'd be wrong.
\nThis year, merchants sold an astounding $6.2 billion worth of wares through Shopify on Black Friday. That's up 25% from last year, when the record was ~$5 billion. Just crazy high growth on a crazy big base. The law of big numbers clearly hasn't found a way to apply itself here yet!
\nThat volume of orders means the Shopify monolith gets put through its paces. The backend API peaked at 31 million requests per minute. The databases carried 53 million reads and 2 million writes per second. Bonkers.
\nRarely do the stars align to shine so brightly that a single company is stewarded by a still-active programmer with a stellar pedigree of core contributions, saddled with such unceasing success, faced with a constant barrage of novel technical challenges, and willing to contribute everything they learn and build back into the open-source base pillars. But that's Shopify.
\nUltimately, this is all downstream from being a founder-led business. Tobi Lütke not only served on the Rails core team in the early days, but continues to steer the Shopify ship with a programmer's eye for detail and exploration. The latest release of Omarchy even features his new Try tool. How many CEOs of companies worth two hundred billion dollars still program like that?
\nDespite all this, there's occasionally still some fringe consternation in the Ruby world about Shopify's dominance. In Rails, Shopify employs almost half the core contributors. In Ruby, they have several people on the core team too. Seeing this as anything but a blessing is silly, though.
\nWe wouldn't have such battle-tested releases of Rails without Shopify running production on the framework's edge. We wouldn't have gotten YJIT without the years of effort they sunk into improving Ruby's core performance. And we wouldn't have seen the recent production-proving of Ractors without them either. Any programming community should be so lucky as to have a Shopify!
\nNow I'm obviously biased here. Not only have I been friends with Tobi for over twenty years, but I also serve on the board of directors for the company. I'm both socially and economically incentivized to cheer for this extraordinary company. But that doesn't mean it isn't all true too!
\nShopify is indeed the patron saint of Ruby on Rails. Its infrastructure team is the backbone of our ecosystem, and its continued success the best case study of how far you can take this framework and language. They deserve a gawd damn parade for all they do.
\nSo on this Cyber Monday, I say cheers to Tobi, cheers to the thousands of Shopifolk. You're killing it for merchants, shoppers, and all of us working with Ruby on Rails. Bravo.
\n", "date_modified": "2025-12-01T10:56:49+00:00", "date_published": "2025-12-01T08:32:41+00:00", "external_url": "https://world.hey.com/dhh/six-billion-reasons-to-cheer-for-shopify-55720846", "id": "urn:aggr:item:05f795d27ea019b39214e1b37caf9ecf6e0c7cdc", "language": "en-US", "summary": "Black Friday is usually when ecommerce sets new records. This has certainly been true for Shopify through most of its existence. So much so that the company spends months in advance preparing for The Big Day(s). You'd think after more than…", "tags": [ "programming" ], "title": "Six billion reasons to cheer for Shopify", "url": "https://aggr.aymericbeaumet.com/items/world-hey-com/2025-12-01-six-billion-reasons-to-cheer-for-shopify/" } ], "language": "en", "title": "David Heinemeier Hansson", "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1" }