Father of three, Creator of Ruby on Rails Omarchy, Co-owner & CTO of 37signals, Shopify director, NYT best-selling author, and Le Mans 24h class-winner.
Joined April 2008
- Tweets 70,297
- Following 198
- Followers 695,660
- Likes 44,691
3,080 Photos and videos
This was one of the longest, most interesting conversations I've ever had with another human in my life. Lots of great podcasts go deep, but @lexfridman takes you to the bottom of the Mariana trench!
12 Jul 2025
Here's my 6 hour conversation with @dhh, a legendary programmer, creator of Ruby on Rails, author, and race car driver. This was a fun and inspiring conversation on everything from the future of programming & AI to the nature of happiness & productivity to the value of family, getting married and having kids.
X limits video length to 6 hours. So this full convo doesn't fit (by a few minutes). So, the first 6 hours are here on X. The full version is up everywhere else (see comment).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Episode highlight
1:21 - Introduction
2:32 - Programming - early days
19:57 - JavaScript
30:16 - Google Chrome and DOJ
38:03 - Ruby programming language
45:14 - Beautiful code
1:03:15 - Metaprogramming
1:06:36 - Dynamic typing
1:13:55 - Scaling
1:26:47 - Future of programming
1:44:18 - Future of AI
1:50:13 - Vibe coding
1:58:45 - Rails manifesto: Principles of a great programming language
2:23:11 - Why managers are useless
2:32:32 - Small teams
2:38:39 - Jeff Bezos
2:53:57 - Why meetings are toxic
3:01:43 - Case against retirement
3:09:00 - Hard work
3:14:38 - Why we left the cloud
3:17:48 - AWS
3:27:07 - Owning your own servers
3:33:19 - Elon Musk
3:43:01 - Apple
3:54:48 - Tim Sweeney
4:06:22 - Fatherhood
4:32:04 - Racing
4:59:08 - Cars
5:04:26 - Programming setup
5:19:35 - Programming language for beginners
5:32:53 - Open source
5:41:46 - WordPress drama
5:53:03 - Money and happiness
6:01:56 - Hope
376
526
7,211
2,247,294
May Europe one day wake up and start striving for this level of capitalistic homerun. Dump the degrowth nonsense, celebrate progress, and once again reach for the stars.
Jun 12
Elon Musk just created ~5,000 new millionaires, current and former $SPCX employees.
Of those ~5,000 people, roughly 400 of them will see stakes worth $100 million.
130
359
5,331
209,993
DHH retweeted
Jun 12
The creator of Ruby on Rails is all in on AI...but that doesn't mean he's rushing to build it into the framework just yet.
On the newest On Rails, @DHH joins @robbyrussell to talk Rails, the Basecamp 5 launch, and AI-assisted development: "It is a professional obligation of every programmer to take this revolution seriously."
Curious where Rails is headed? Listen or watch the full episode on YouTube (link in thread). podcast.rubyonrails.org/2462…
12
24
251
48,531
The Omarchy Machine is COMPUTING! We qualified P3 for the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans! Fantastic job by the whole @RacingNielsen team, and a banger lap right at the end by @jackdoohanok 🤘
32
23
868
33,938
Tobi showed up at Le Mans with the best pace I've ever seen from a first-time bronze-rated driver. If not for track limits on his flying lap, he would have been fastest of all bronzes in qualifying. Satisfying to have been a forcing function for this!
Jun 10
Absolute privilege to get to compete in the 24h of Le Mans this year.
Bucket list stuff. Wouldn’t have gotten here without @dhh’s encouragement and guidance. Watch this weekend. We are in @TDSRacing_live #14
21
6
438
51,299
Omarchy on Asahi creator lost access to his GitHub account two weeks ago due to some automated process flagging his account. Repo went offline and has been since. Not even me personally reaching out to GitHub twice has been able to restore his account. Terrifying. Embarrassing.
Jun 10
Sadly, no. GitHub, like every other corporation, has too much red tape to get through.
I’ve given up on them and now I’m migrating to Codeberg.
85
88
2,251
184,162
I can only imagine the task to keep GitHub safe from scams and malware, but when the system results in false positives, it's utterly unacceptable that after two weeks it still isn't rectified. Seriously undermines trust in GitHub as a platform and dependency. Not what they need.
11
3
396
20,147
It's been twenty years since I last spoke in Japan about Rails. That's clearly far, far too long. So very happy to be back this October in Tokyo. One of my favorite places on this little planet. kaigionrails.org/2026/
17
44
320
28,342
We once had to contend with calls for a "diversity consultant" who was meant to come hunt for racism at 37s. Not because anyone had ever seen or heard of any, but because it could all have been hidden or internalized. Real witch doctor madness era.
Jun 3
You’ll notice there is no look-back celebration or remembrance of this or virtually any of the other great moral victories from that era. It’s all been memory holed, a will-o'-the-wisp dimming out in the far distance.
67
130
4,105
241,779
Overall, the woke hysteria, the sanctification of Floyd, and the diversity delusion constituted the most insane five years or so of corporate culture takeover I've ever witnessed. There are still remnants of it in academia and elsewhere, but it's no longer Total Capture.
32
19
1,137
32,284
Mise makes dev life so much simpler. A single env manager for Ruby, JavaScript, Go, and all the modern AI tooling. Every project can have their own versions. Stable system packages can be separated from high-churn AI tooling. Thrilled to sponsor @jdx in this mission!
44
47
1,174
127,301
"Taking out the trash is still everyone's job some of the time. But mostly, I want to be sitting by the pond of interesting problems, fishing for the ones that catch my eye and hook my motivation. Who could wish to retire from that?" world.hey.com/dhh/a-pond-of-…
22
19
435
33,763
"This is a protectionist tale as old as time. And the justifications are just as tired: It's about quality! It's about attribution! It's about workers! Spare me. It's about you, your insecurities, and your privileges." world.hey.com/dhh/let-the-ag…
66
55
690
107,156
You can’t outwork the whole world. There’s always going to be someone somewhere willing to work as hard as you. Someone just as hungry. Or hungrier.
Assuming you can work harder and longer than someone else is giving yourself too much credit for your effort and not enough for theirs. Putting in 1,001 hours to someone else’s 1,000 isn’t going to tip the scale in your favor.
What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.
A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.
So how do people get ahead if it’s not about outworking everyone else?
People make it because they’re talented, they’re lucky, they’re in the right place at the right time, they know how to work with other people, they know how to sell an idea, they know what moves people, they can tell a story, they know which details matter and which don’t, they can see the big and small pictures in every situation, and they know how to do something with an opportunity. And for so many other reasons.
So get the outwork myth out of your head. Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.
[The Outwork Myth — It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, 2018]
180
656
6,607
419,330
It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work is for sale on Amazon (and in a ton of translations around the world): amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Cr…
5
1
104
29,024
Empowering people to own and change their software was the open source slogan for decades. Now the grand democratization finally arrives, and it's all "yeah, but not like that" 🙄
Flathub has updated their policy to explicitly ban the usage of AI / LLM in the development of any software.
“Applications containing AI-generated or AI-assisted code, documentation, or other content are not allowed.”
Flathub is a Flatpak powered “App Store for Linux”, popular among GNOME users.
116
74
1,194
130,401
This describes my work on Rails and Omarchy well. I built both for me first and foremost. The best framework, the best computer. What I'd want to have with me if I lived on the mountain by myself.
May 28
Rick Rubin’s House on the Mountain test:
Create according to your own taste, not for applause, critics, algorithms, or market demand.
“Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows—all magnificent. Curated to your taste.”
“This is the essence of great art. We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.”
“I'm willing to go to extremes to make the thing that I want to inhabit and it's not for anyone else. it's just for me.”
43
79
1,276
109,042