At the Rails World 2026 keynote this past week DHH declared that hand coding was “no longer economically viable” and that doing so “was over”. He also said they were rewriting their email application product, Hey, in Rust on the server instead of in Ruby.
He also went on to say that anyone that disagrees is essentially experiencing the five stages of grief. For those that are unfamiliar those are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
I wasn’t at the conference this year so I couldn’t measure the temperature of the room and more importantly in the hallway conversations. The discourse online though ranges from complete and total agreement to something like “DHH just killed Ruby and Rails with one bullet” and everything in between.
I think that anyone that has been writing code professionally for any amount of time has to admit that what it was, what it is and what it will be will no longer be the same. I imagine quite a lot of people are having a hard time in this age of uncertainty.
I’m reminded of a quote from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Chancellor Gorkon, after a contentious dinner, says to Captain Kirk the following: “If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.”
