Smash Notes

Back to #501 – DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux, with David Heinemeier Hansson.

Why Do Programmers Romanticize Writing Code by Hand?

David Heinemeier Hansson says a Commodore 64 programmer dropped into 2026 would be lost for a little while. That machine had a one-megahertz CPU and 64K of memory, and everyone who wrote software for it internalized constraints, because the machine was nothing but constraints. Efficient software is still beautiful. The optimization required to get a video game out of one megahertz is a different job from the optimization required now. Handwritten programming, slow and tightly constrained, felt like chiseling.

He treats the nostalgia the way he treats cowboy movies. New York smelled like an open sewer when horses handled transportation, because they left waste everywhere. Red Dead Redemption is how to visit that past without the smell. Handwritten code is already being romanticized the same way. He is grateful for 20 years when beautiful code written by hand was also economically valuable. People still willfully write new games for the Commodore 64 and the Sega Mega Drive. The romance can stay. It is not the job.

Transcript

#501 – DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux ·

Lex Fridman Podcast

More from this episode

  1. How Does David Heinemeier Hansson Feel About AI?David Heinemeier Hansson is incredibly excited about the role of AI in programming. Existential dread is not an emotion for him.
  2. Why Was Opus 4.5 a Dividing Line for Coding Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson calls November 24, 2025 the dividing line, because Opus 4.5 returned work uncannily close to code he would have written himself.
  3. Why Was Fable Held Back Over Security Holes?David Heinemeier Hansson says the Fable release was held back because the model was so good at finding holes an attacker could exploit that it was not safe to…
  4. Did Agents Write the Quattro Release of Omarchy?David Heinemeier Hansson has not written, by hand, any of the code that shipped in Quattro.
  5. Why Don't Most Organizations Make Better Software?David Heinemeier Hansson says most organizations do not know what they want or how to make it better. They are not bottlenecked on implementation.
  6. Can One Person Build Premiere for Linux?David Heinemeier Hansson says one person can now build Premiere and Photoshop for Linux.
  7. Should Open Source Maintainers Welcome AI Pull Requests?David Heinemeier Hansson says open source maintainers should welcome AI pull requests, because sharing a tool built for one person is simpler than it looks.
  8. Does David Heinemeier Hansson Prefer Agent Pull Requests?David Heinemeier Hansson would rather get an agent-written pull request to one of his projects than one written by a human.
  9. How Does Omarchy Review a Flood of Pull Requests?David Heinemeier Hansson says Omarchy now takes contributions from people who could not have sent them before. He has run the project for a little over a year.
  10. How Fast Can AI Agents Add an Omarchy Feature?David Heinemeier Hansson started Omarchy last summer, between sessions at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, after too many videos about Linux got him bitten by the bug.
  11. Why Did Talk-to-code Fail for 50 Years?David Heinemeier Hansson says the last 40 or 50 years of programming kept promising that ordinary people could write software just by talking.
  12. How Fast Did the Omarchy Plugin Marketplace Grow?David Heinemeier Hansson says the Omarchy plugin marketplace reached 330 plugins in three days.
  13. Why Can Rust Be Ugly to Humans and Useful to Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson hates reading Rust and still ships applications written in it.
  14. Why Can Programmers Be Worse at Directing AI Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson says that for a while his own programming experience was a deficit.
  15. Why Do Detailed Prompts Hurt Coding Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson says the system prompt shipped for Opus 5, and presumably for Fable as well, shrank by 80 percent.
  16. Why Does Beautiful Code Still Matter for AI Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson still sweats the details when agents change the Ruby that runs the 37signals business. For 25 years the economic reason was simple.
  17. Why Does Cheaper Software Raise Demand for Programs?David Heinemeier Hansson says programmers who love building things are not under threat from AI, and there is a case for needing more builders than exist now.
  18. What Should Young Programmers Do About AI?David Heinemeier Hansson tells a young programmer not to anticipate where the tools go next.
  19. Can a Programmer Catch Up on AI Coding in Two Weeks?David Heinemeier Hansson says a programmer who missed the past year can catch up to the frontier in two weeks. There is no long accumulation you have to replay.
  20. Why Did 1990s Shooter Games Matter for AI?David Heinemeier Hansson says 1990s shooter games mattered for AI because, without them, there would have been no GPUs and no AI in the shape it has now.
  21. Why Does Coding With Agents Need Different Tools?David Heinemeier Hansson says programming with agents requires a different tool set because the work shifts from one problem at a time in your head to…
  22. Why Do Coding Agents Work Better on Linux?David Heinemeier Hansson says coding agents work better on Linux than on Mac or Windows.
  23. Why Chase a One Minute Linux Install?David Heinemeier Hansson wants an operating system that installs in less than 60 seconds.
  24. Why Set a Goal Just Beyond Plausible?David Heinemeier Hansson says the magic happens when a goal sits slightly beyond plausible, and a self-driving car that arrives after a missed schedule still…
  25. Why Did Omarchy Shrink Its Install Image?David Heinemeier Hansson cut the Omarchy install image from 7.5 gigabytes to about 5.85 gigabytes.
  26. Why Does Omarchy Ship With Apps Already Installed?David Heinemeier Hansson ships Omarchy with software already installed because the name is a chef's menu.
  27. Has David Heinemeier Hansson Written Bash Lately?David Heinemeier Hansson has not written any bash himself for a couple of months.
  28. Why Are Linux Error Messages Useful to AI Agents?David Heinemeier Hansson says agents have taken the hardship out of diagnosing Linux and turned its overly specific, arcane error messages into an advantage.
  29. Why Does Basecamp Treat Coding Agents Like Coworkers?David Heinemeier Hansson says Basecamp has started putting coding agents inside the product and treating them as coworkers.
  30. Why Does Switching Between AI Agents Feel Like Racing?David Heinemeier Hansson finds the switching mentally exhausting in an exhilarating way.
  31. Why Does the AI Agent Pace Feel Unsustainable?David Heinemeier Hansson says the last three months have felt more exhausting than any other project in the last five years, and the pace is not sustainable…
  32. Why Does Raising Kids Beat Every Hobby?David Heinemeier Hansson calls creating life with another human you love the peak experience of being on the planet, because love for people who come directly…
  33. Why Did David Heinemeier Hansson Cut X Cold?David Heinemeier Hansson cut X cold for about three weeks over the summer because it is the most addictive form of information, entertainment, and connection…
  34. How Are the Latest AI Models Stressing 37signals?David Heinemeier Hansson says nothing has stressed the technical team at 37signals like the latest batches of AI models, which are exceptionally good at…
  35. How Does Plain English Shape Omarchy?David Heinemeier Hansson says you sit down, ramble in plain English, and out comes an operating system shaped in your image.
  36. Why Did a Local Protocol Need a Cumbersome Web Setup?David Heinemeier Hansson says a protocol built for stateful work on local machines needed a cumbersome setup and dance before it could talk to a web system.
  37. Why Were Bluesky and Mastodon Good for X?David Heinemeier Hansson says one of the best things that happened for X was Blue Sky and Mastodon coming around.
  38. What Is the Memento Mori Calendar in Omarchy?David Heinemeier Hansson built a memento mori Easter egg into the calendar.
  39. Do American Croissants Match 7-eleven in Copenhagen?David Heinemeier Hansson lived in the United States for 20 years and has yet to eat a single croissant at the level of a 7-Eleven croissant in Copenhagen.
  40. Why Does David Heinemeier Hansson Prefer the 1980s?David Heinemeier Hansson would rather be uploaded into the 1980s than into the 90s.

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