I sat front row for David's talk yesterday morning. Having talked with him the day before, I’ll admit… I wasn’t particularly surprised (nor unprepared).
A bit of a field report from #RailsWorld: the vibe here is far from doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. Wherever our industry is headed, most of us are still employed as menders… tending to systems that customers rely on and businesses are quite happy to keep paying for.
Most of us aren’t waking up to a blank canvas and designing the architecture of the future. We’re inheriting decisions made years ago, updating old patterns, working around constraints, and keeping this shit running reliably.
I think these newer tools give us an opportunity to wonder a little more about the systems we’ve inherited. To unpack why things work the way they do. To tinker with assumptions we haven’t had the time, confidence, or permission to revisit… and share what we learn so the next person, or agent, has an easier time.
That deployment model we picked eight years ago? Worth another look. Some of our web apps probably wish they were native apps. And there are plenty of architectural decisions we’ve been living with mostly because… well, we’ve been busy living with them.
There’s plenty of understandable anxiety about what these tools mean for our work. I’m increasingly curious about what they give us permission to revisit.
Once my keynote is published, I’ll share more about a little programming-language-adjacent framework I’ve been working on for approaching exactly this kind of curiosity.
To be fair, this is true of most of AFK world. Things start seeing a lot less doomy and gloomy when you're actually outside talking with other humans. Seems to mostly be online and various darker corners where they're dooming and glooming.
I get why DHH would be really happy about getting rid of engineers. It's less clear how this isn't a little bit gloomy for the engineers.
Is the idea that they'll switch to doing "product owner" roles overseeing agents? I don't see that employing the same number of people or paying as well as engineering used to.
To be honest I expect that that role to suit different people to those that used to be engineers.
If this feels gloomy to some people, it's because it is.
I don't think that hiring the engineers was ever an option. He said that he couldnt maintain six native apps before agentic coding. The business never even considered expanding headcount by 6X to do it, it was a complete nonstarter.
There is no fixed pie of work that AI is taking from us. In this circumstance, increased productivity caused the company to just make more stuff, not lay off people (or avoid planned hires).
It is a real world example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Jevon's paradox has to do with consuming resources, not employment. There are plenty of examples of fields getting more efficient and employment falling. Farming and manufacturing being 2 examples.
You're conflating different categories of activities. Farming and manufacturing are amenable to automation precisely because not much real thinking and communication is required.
robbyrussell · · focus · HN ↗
A bit of a field report from #RailsWorld: the vibe here is far from doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. Wherever our industry is headed, most of us are still employed as menders… tending to systems that customers rely on and businesses are quite happy to keep paying for.
Most of us aren’t waking up to a blank canvas and designing the architecture of the future. We’re inheriting decisions made years ago, updating old patterns, working around constraints, and keeping this shit running reliably.
I think these newer tools give us an opportunity to wonder a little more about the systems we’ve inherited. To unpack why things work the way they do. To tinker with assumptions we haven’t had the time, confidence, or permission to revisit… and share what we learn so the next person, or agent, has an easier time.
That deployment model we picked eight years ago? Worth another look. Some of our web apps probably wish they were native apps. And there are plenty of architectural decisions we’ve been living with mostly because… well, we’ve been busy living with them.
There’s plenty of understandable anxiety about what these tools mean for our work. I’m increasingly curious about what they give us permission to revisit.
Once my keynote is published, I’ll share more about a little programming-language-adjacent framework I’ve been working on for approaching exactly this kind of curiosity.
In the meantime… keep showing up. Keep wondering.
Long live Ruby. Long live Rails.
p(bloom)
embedding-shape · · focus · HN ↗
To be fair, this is true of most of AFK world. Things start seeing a lot less doomy and gloomy when you're actually outside talking with other humans. Seems to mostly be online and various darker corners where they're dooming and glooming.
Lio · · focus · HN ↗
Is the idea that they'll switch to doing "product owner" roles overseeing agents? I don't see that employing the same number of people or paying as well as engineering used to.
To be honest I expect that that role to suit different people to those that used to be engineers.
If this feels gloomy to some people, it's because it is.
andrewmutz · · focus · HN ↗
Lio · · focus · HN ↗
If he's hiring new people they won't be engineers or the people that used to do engineering.
They'll be people that are better suited to writing English than code.
andrewmutz · · focus · HN ↗
There is no fixed pie of work that AI is taking from us. In this circumstance, increased productivity caused the company to just make more stuff, not lay off people (or avoid planned hires).
It is a real world example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
confidantlake · · focus · HN ↗
jan_m_savage · · focus · HN ↗
SE is not like farming.