Concerns with his politics aside, I do think there's a truth to what he's talking about here, and that he is just spelling out the reality that developers are, or shortly will be, facing. For many this will be deeply uncomfortable to hear.
It is notable that his perspective in this talk is very much from a developer-user side rather than someone who is responsible for the framework itself. That surprises me, and I suspect it is not a good omen for Rails.
For all of this embrace of agentic development, there is nothing here on how they are adapting the framework for this new agentic development reality. Agents do currently work well with Rails, but there's nothing here pushing things forward as best as I can see.
I know for my own projects I've largely moved to Elixir/Phoenix, for similar reasons to his use of Rust... I didn't want to have to learn it, but now I don't have to and I get to benefit from its strengths.
> Concerns with his politics aside, I do think there's a truth to what he's talking about here
One thing the AI era has changed for me is how easily I spot Gell-Mann amnesia, of which this is an unfortunately strong example.
His politics, even putting aside their nature, are framed with deliberate misuse of facts and data; why would he be someone to listen to in any depth on any other topic?
With his infamous "As I remember London" article [1] he directly correlated skin colour to nationality leading to the claim that native Brits had dropped from 60% to a third.
If you check now using current sources the British-born population is still around 59% the only thing that has changed is that fewer people identify themselves on the census as 'White British' which has a host of reasons around it. So he took a misleading statistic, interpreted it incorrectly and then built some kind of nostalgic story around it to support what was essentially an excuse to support far-right thugs protesting.
>So he took a misleading statistic, interpreted it incorrectly and then built some kind of nostalgic story around it to support what was essentially an excuse to support far-right thugs protesting.
His exact words from the blog:
"In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third."
White Brits are the only native/indigenous Brits to London. It's not misleading, it's just a fact. He did not interpret this fact incorrectly.
That's disingenuous because it's a neologism based on the population that were in America at the time of its colonisation. Native literally has the etymology of place of birth in the word.
robgough · · focus · HN ↗
It is notable that his perspective in this talk is very much from a developer-user side rather than someone who is responsible for the framework itself. That surprises me, and I suspect it is not a good omen for Rails.
For all of this embrace of agentic development, there is nothing here on how they are adapting the framework for this new agentic development reality. Agents do currently work well with Rails, but there's nothing here pushing things forward as best as I can see.
I know for my own projects I've largely moved to Elixir/Phoenix, for similar reasons to his use of Rust... I didn't want to have to learn it, but now I don't have to and I get to benefit from its strengths.
dofm · · focus · HN ↗
One thing the AI era has changed for me is how easily I spot Gell-Mann amnesia, of which this is an unfortunately strong example.
His politics, even putting aside their nature, are framed with deliberate misuse of facts and data; why would he be someone to listen to in any depth on any other topic?
diego_sandoval · · focus · HN ↗
Any specific examples? I am/was out of the loop on this and had to Google "DHH politics" to know what people are talking about.
rossriley · · focus · HN ↗
If you check now using current sources the British-born population is still around 59% the only thing that has changed is that fewer people identify themselves on the census as 'White British' which has a host of reasons around it. So he took a misleading statistic, interpreted it incorrectly and then built some kind of nostalgic story around it to support what was essentially an excuse to support far-right thugs protesting.
[1] <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64" rel="nofollow">https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
throwawayfifo · · focus · HN ↗
His exact words from the blog:
"In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third."
White Brits are the only native/indigenous Brits to London. It's not misleading, it's just a fact. He did not interpret this fact incorrectly.
rossriley · · focus · HN ↗
sejje · · focus · HN ↗
rossriley · · focus · HN ↗
sejje · · focus · HN ↗