Rails creator quits hand-writing code, goes all-in on AI coding

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, announced that he has not hand-written a single line of code since around March 2026.

According to The Decoder, he told the Rails World 2026 keynote audience that "English is a better programming language than Ruby." He argued manual coding no longer makes economic sense for most programmers and companies, and that by year's end that will apply to practically every domain.

The reversal is striking: just over a year ago he was openly pushing back against AI coding. He called it "the biggest thing that has happened in the history of computing," said programmers will become "professional makers of things," and argued traditional software abstractions lose value when AI agents are the ones changing code.