TL;DR
Get business pricing on tech for your team
- Business-only prices and quantity discounts
- Tax-exempt purchasing
- Multiple users, one account, clear invoices
At Rails World, Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson declared that writing code by hand is over for professional work at 37signals, which now has AI agents generating nearly all its code. The claim, reported by The Pulse, lands as Amazon and Meta struggle to hire engineers, feeding a wider debate about the future of the profession.
David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37signals, told the audience at his Rails World keynote that writing code by hand is over for professional work — at 37signals at least — as the company shifts to AI agents generating nearly all its code. The declaration, reported by The Pulse on September 24, 2026, has ignited a new industry-wide argument about whether manual coding still has a professional future.
According to The Pulse’s report, DHH’s statement was framed specifically around his own company: 37signals is moving to a model where agents generate nearly all of its code. The report describes this as a decisive shift at the firm that built and maintains Ruby on Rails, one of the most widely used web application frameworks, giving the claim outsized weight among developers. The keynote address was titled around the question of whether writing code by hand is finished as a professional practice.
The same report connects DHH’s statement to a second data point: Amazon and Meta are struggling to hire engineers. The Pulse presents these hiring difficulties as part of the same broader picture, suggesting that demand patterns for software engineers are shifting at the same time that AI coding tools are becoming capable of producing most routine code at major technology companies.
A third element of the report is the prediction that code reviews will probably also go away as agents take over more of the writing. If both authorship and review of code migrate to automated systems, the traditional human workflow of writing, submitting, and reviewing changes would be restructured rather than merely accelerated — a claim that, like the others in the report, reflects the speaker’s and the publication’s assessment rather than a settled industry consensus.
Rails World • The work of software
3 Angles on the New Debate About Coding by Hand
Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson says professional hand-written code is over at 37signals, where AI agents now generate nearly all code. The claim has reopened questions about engineering jobs, human oversight, and what comes next.
01 / Three angles
What the debate is really about
The announcement is more than a new tool choice. It touches the way software is produced, the future shape of engineering work, and the evidence needed before treating a bold prediction as a settled trend.
01 • Production
Agents as authors
37signals says agents generate nearly all its code. If that holds up, engineers may spend less time typing changes and more time specifying, directing, and checking them.
02 • Profession
Roles in motion
The Pulse also reports hiring difficulties at Amazon and Meta. The report links this to a shifting landscape, but does not establish AI as the cause.
03 • Oversight
Review under pressure
The forecast that code reviews may go away raises a deeper question: who will own quality, security, and maintainability when agents write more of the code?
02 / Context
Why DHH’s call carries weight
DHH created Ruby on Rails and co-founded 37signals. Rails helped popularize convention-over-configuration web development and powered companies including GitHub and Shopify.
For much of the framework’s history, developers wrote code and reviewed one another’s changes. DHH’s keynote marks a sharper claim than “AI helps programmers”: at his company, hand-writing code for professional work is finished.
That history gives the statement influence, but it does not make the company’s experience representative of every engineering organization.
From framework to agents
Ruby on Rails popularizes a framework-led approach to building web applications.
AI coding tools move from suggestions toward agents that can write, test, and modify code.
DHH describes hand-written professional code as over at 37signals, as reported by The Pulse.
“Agents generate nearly all its code.”
The Pulse’s account of 37signals“Amazon and Meta struggle to hire engineers.”
Reported context • cause not established“Code reviews will probably also go away.”
Forecast attributed to The Pulse coverage03 / Evidence check
Claims versus confirmed reality
The report combines a company-specific account, broader hiring observations, and predictions. Keeping those categories separate helps show what the story supports today—and what still needs evidence.
| Statement | Status | What is known |
|---|---|---|
| 37signals uses agents for nearly all code | Company account | Reported as the company’s own account; the report offers no independent verification of the proportion or resulting code quality. |
| Amazon and Meta are struggling to hire engineers | Reported claim | The Pulse reports hiring difficulties, but does not establish whether AI, cost-cutting, restructuring, or labor-market conditions explain them. |
| Code reviews will disappear | Forecast | This is a prediction, not an observed industry-wide outcome. Human oversight may change without disappearing. |
| The model will transfer to other companies | Open question | Large enterprises, legacy systems, and regulated environments may face different constraints than a mature Rails shop. |
04 / What to watch
Evidence will decide the argument
The strongest test is measurable performance over time: what ships, how well it works, what it costs, and how responsibility for quality is assigned.
Track product quality, defects, delivery speed, and cost—and whether the company shares comparable data on agent-generated work.
Watch for clearer evidence on engineering demand at Amazon and Meta, including whether roles shrink or shift toward different skills.
Look for organizations formally changing review requirements for agent-written code. That would signal a structural shift in engineering work.
Agents produce code within a project’s context.
Compare quality, speed, defects, and costs.
Define who checks, approves, and owns changes.
Judge the prediction against results across teams.
Reader’s guide
Key questions, answered
The reported claim is specific. Its wider consequences remain unsettled.
Did DHH say hand-writing code is over for everyone?
No. The statement was explicitly limited to professional work at 37signals. Whether it applies elsewhere remains open.
Is 37signals really generating nearly all its code with agents?
That is the company’s account as reported by The Pulse. The report provides no independent verification of the proportion or code quality.
Why are Amazon and Meta struggling to hire?
The report does not establish a cause. AI-related changes, cost pressures, restructuring, and labor-market shifts are possible factors.
Will code reviews really disappear?
That is a forecast, not an observed outcome. Broad changes to review would reshape engineering roles, but remain unconfirmed.
Why DHH’s Call Carries Weight
The statement matters partly because of who made it. DHH is not a generative AI vendor promoting its own product; he is the creator of a framework that has powered two decades of hand-written web applications and a longtime commentator who has historically been skeptical of industry fads. When a figure with that track record declares the end of manual coding at his own company, it forces developers and engineering leaders to take the question seriously rather than dismiss it as vendor marketing.
The timing amplifies the effect. If Amazon and Meta — two of the largest employers of software engineers in the world — are indeed struggling to hire engineers, as The Pulse reports, then DHH’s internal decision at a small company reads less like an outlier and more like one signal within a larger shift in how software gets built and who gets paid to build it. For individual developers, the practical stakes include career planning, which skills to invest in, and whether review and architecture roles will absorb the work that writing code used to involve.
How We Got to This Debate
: “Ruby on Rails, released by DHH in 2004, popularized convention-over-configuration web development and became the foundation of companies including GitHub, Shopify, and 37signals itself. For most of that history, the framework’s ecosystem was built around hand-written code and human code review as the core of engineering practice.
The current debate follows several years of rapid adoption of AI coding assistants and, more recently, autonomous agents that can write, test, and modify code with limited supervision. DHH’s Rails World keynote marks a notable escalation in rhetoric: rather than describing AI as a productivity aid alongside human programmers, he framed hand-writing code as finished for professional work at his company. The Pulse’s coverage situates this alongside reported engineering hiring difficulties at Amazon and Meta, and the projection that code reviews will probably disappear as well.
“The end has come for writing code by hand for professional work — at 37signals at least.”
— David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), Rails World keynote, as reported by The Pulse
Claims Versus Confirmed Reality
Several elements of this story remain claims rather than established facts. DHH’s declaration applies to 37signals specifically — he explicitly limited it to “at 37signals at least,” and it is not yet clear how other companies, particularly large enterprises with legacy systems and regulatory constraints, will compare. The extent to which Amazon’s and Meta’s hiring struggles stem from AI-driven changes, versus broader cost-cutting, restructuring, or labor-market conditions, is not established by the report.
The prediction that code reviews will probably disappear is a forecast, not an observed outcome. It is also unclear what quality, security, and maintainability results 37signals is seeing from agent-generated code, how much human oversight remains in its workflow, and whether the model would transfer to companies without a mature framework like Rails to constrain agent behavior. No independent verification of the “nearly all code” figure beyond the company’s own account was available in the report.
Watchpoints as the Shift Plays Out
The most direct test of DHH’s claim will be 37signals’ own output: whether products continue to ship at quality with agents producing nearly all the code, and whether the company publishes data on defects, velocity, or costs. Watch also for whether other framework maintainers and prominent engineering leaders endorse or push back on the position in the coming months, and whether hiring data from Amazon and Meta clarifies whether engineering demand is genuinely shrinking or being redefined.
Longer term, the status of code review is a concrete marker to track. If large organizations begin formally restructuring or eliminating review processes for agent-written code, that would represent a structural change in software engineering roles rather than a shift in tooling — the point at which DHH’s forecast could be judged against evidence.
Source: rss
Key Questions
Did DHH say hand-writing code is over for everyone?
No. His statement, as reported, was explicitly limited to professional work at 37signals, where agents now generate nearly all code. Whether the model applies elsewhere remains an open question.
Is 37signals really generating nearly all its code with AI agents?
That is the company’s own account, reported by The Pulse. No independent verification of the proportion or of the resulting code quality was available in the report.
Why are Amazon and Meta struggling to hire engineers?
The Pulse reports the hiring struggles but does not establish a cause. AI-driven changes, cost pressures, and labor-market shifts are all possible factors; the reason is not confirmed.
Will code reviews really disappear?
That is a forecast, attributed to the coverage, not an observed outcome. It would mark a major restructuring of engineering roles if it happens broadly, but no widespread shift has been documented yet.
Why does DHH’s opinion carry so much weight here?
He created Ruby on Rails, a framework central to two decades of hand-written web development, and has no obvious stake in AI tool marketing. That track record makes his declaration harder to dismiss than a vendor’s claim.
Source: rss
Evergreen bestsellers Picks
bestsellers
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
