rails creator dhh stops hand-coding, cites ai economics

david heinemeier hansson, co-founder of basecamp and creator of ruby on rails, revealed at rails world 2026 that he hasn't written a single line of code by hand since around march 2026. after 25 years as a professional programmer, he argues that manual coding no longer makes economic sense for most programmers and companies. hansson frames this shift as the start of a new career, where programmers will become 'professional makers of things,' steering ai intelligence. he also notes that traditional software abstractions lose value when ai agents are the ones changing code, and that 'no one yet has the blueprint' for this new landscape.