David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH) is a legendary programmer, creator of Ruby on Rails, co-owner & CTO of 37signals that created Basecamp, HEY, & ONCE, and is a NYT-best-selling author (with Jason Fried) of 4 books: REWORK, REMOTE, Getting Real, and It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work. He is also a race car driver, including a class-winning performance at the 24 hour Le Mans race.
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Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/dhh-david-heinemeier-hansson-transcript

CONTACT LEX:
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EPISODE LINKS:
DHH’s X: https://x.com/dhh
DHH’s Website: https://dhh.dk/
Ruby on Rails: https://rubyonrails.org/
37signals: https://37signals.com/

DHH’s books:
Rework: https://amzn.to/44rSKob
Remote: https://amzn.to/44GFJ91
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work: https://amzn.to/46bzuwx
Getting Real: https://amzn.to/4kzoMDg

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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:58) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(08:48) – Programming – early days
(26:13) – JavaScript
(36:32) – Google Chrome and DOJ
(44:19) – Ruby programming language
(51:30) – Beautiful code
(1:09:31) – Metaprogramming
(1:12:52) – Dynamic typing
(1:20:10) – Scaling
(1:33:03) – Future of programming
(1:50:34) – Future of AI
(1:56:29) – Vibe coding
(2:05:01) – Rails manifesto: Principles of a great programming language
(2:29:27) – Why managers are useless
(2:38:48) – Small teams
(2:44:55) – Jeff Bezos
(3:00:13) – Why meetings are toxic
(3:07:58) – Case against retirement
(3:15:15) – Hard work
(3:20:53) – Why we left the cloud
(3:24:04) – AWS
(3:33:22) – Owning your own servers
(3:39:35) – Elon Musk
(3:49:17) – Apple
(4:01:03) – Tim Sweeney
(4:12:37) – Fatherhood
(4:38:19) – Racing
(5:05:23) – Cars
(5:10:41) – Programming setup
(5:25:51) – Programming language for beginners
(5:39:09) – Open source
(5:48:01) – WordPress drama
(5:59:18) – Money and happiness
(6:08:11) – Hope

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