What About Rails?

David Heinemeier Hansson is, for better or worse, still in charge of Ruby on Rails. I'd love to stop paying attention to him, but I build applications with Rails, so his actions affect me and my clients. Yesterday, he gave the opening keynote at Rails World 2026, where he laid out his vision for the future of Rails.

Or that's what his talk should have done. His keynote had very little to do with Rails. Here's what he did talk about, and what it means for Rails.

I have retired from being a professional programmer.

Yes, he said that. No, that doesn't mean he's stepping away from software development. He now styles himself a "maker." He now claims that English is the best programming language (because LLMs) and that we don't even necessarily need to read the code the LLMs produce.