I don't think we need less software devs, but I do think if you're not fully embracing AI in your software dev work you're at a very high risk of being a casualty for someone who will. It's simply vastly more productive and if you're a holdout you simply can't keep up

If AI lets us stop writing code we don’t need to write, that isn’t abandoning the Rails philosophy. It may be the most Rails thing imaginable. Rails has always been about “look what I’m NOT doing.” Not writing SQL. Not reinventing the wheel. Not building anything unnecessary.

Things are changing, never doom. Jobs will look different, never doom. Software is being eaten, never doom. Increase your ambition, care deeply about your (changing) craft, build things you're proud of. Never doom!

It's pencils down, people. Writing code by hand is no longer an economically viable skill for most programmers at most companies. But the future of making software has never been brighter. Don't you dare black pill this beautiful moment! piped.video/vDjW_dRyKXY?si=6Fsf…

Normally we get a keynote at Rails World that gives us a new Rails release and some new features. This year we didn't. @dhh spent a good amount of time talking about pencils down, manually written code is dead etc - I think a lot of that is true! It at least lines up pretty well with my experience over the last 6 months. He also spent a greater amount of time talking about the rewrite of Hey in Rust, instead of Rails. But that doesn't mean that Rails is dead, in fact he mentioned that there are still plenty of use-cases out there for Rails, Basecamp being one of them. He emphasized the focus on AI evals, to figure out where you get the most bang for the buck when it comes to Rails, and how great the web as a platform still is. It's easy to be somewhat pessimistic/afraid of the future and see his Rust rewrite story of Hey as Rails being dead - but instead I think it's worth being optimistic, and think back to when all code was written by hand - where, for a Rails shop it wasn't feasible to write native apps. That's how we ended up with web apps, running in web views and a somewhat subpar experience compared to the native implementation. But it was close enough, and gave us a decent enough experience. But in the day where agents can write your code, I think it'd be idiotic not to pursue a native app. Be ambitious! Yeah you might not understand a single line of the code it writes, and maybe that's important to you - then don't do it. But if it works for someone else, I don't think we need to judge them. There's already enough judging between Rails, JavaScript and what not. Don't yuck someone else's yum! And I think the most important point is the positive look at things vs the negative one. We can't always plan for the future, and a negative outlook will impact your day to day - focus on the positives instead! But I also understand the worry as the world around us changes, as less and less freelance clients need your help, as your full-time job becomes more uncertain due to factors you don't control. It's hard! But we shouldn't spiral if we can avoid it. And last, we could've been given a regular keynote, that pretended like nothing had changed in the 12 months since the last Rails World - but that wouldn't be fair either. David doesn't change history or how things plays out, so whether he gives us the truth or sticks to the regular keynote - doesn't change the outcome. But I'd much rather hear the tougher truth, than the "everything is the way it used to be". Use AI to empower you, go out and create the silly project you've already dreamt of, and maybe even dip your toe in the waters outside of your comfort zone and try and build something that isn't Ruby, or Rails, or the web - it might turn out that it's fun? :) #railsworld

He did also say that Rails still makes a lot of sense for Basecamp

Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. Stuff has changed so much in the last year when it comes to programming

Then and now #railsworld

Grok @bot is in the Tesla now. I used it to order Starbucks while FSD drove. No phone, just voice. Confirmed the drink and total, then it placed the order. This is the first thing that actually feels like the car can run an errand with you. Currently available to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, with more tiers to follow Let me know what I should test ordering next from the car! If you have any questions about Grok Bot in the car and how it works let me know and I will do my best to answer.

.@typecraft_dev wild times in Austin

.@Flighty is the coolest app

Hell yeah 💦😂

"Two separate moments use [X], and it's worth keeping them apart:" Please, just stop

Who will I see at this year's Rails World in Austin in a few days? :)

Has anyone experimented with Karpathy's LLM wiki to capture decisions and implementation details for large code bases to help provide the agents context when they implement a feature? And have you found a decline in quality past a certain size of code base?

You can just do things

If you're going to Rails World next week, don't forget to register for this!

We need more people with this perspective on things.