David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, announced that his company 37signals has stopped writing code by hand and now treats manual coding as an exception—a shift he compares to photography's impact on painting. The move reflects a broader industry transition where AI agents are becoming the primary code writers, raising concerns about software quality and what engineering work actually means.

• DHH declared he's retired from programming after 25 years and now sees himself as a "maker of things" steering AI agents rather than writing code directly. 37signals is shifting to native mobile apps and Rust backends because agents can produce adequate code in these areas, while keeping Ruby on Rails only because its conventions work well with AI.
• Software quality is visibly degrading across the industry. Engineers are shipping untested features, working 12-13 hour days just reviewing AI output without understanding it, and outsourcing all thinking to LLMs. Recent examples include Spotify outages and Uber Eats bugs that suggest zero QA testing.
• This transition is happening faster than predicted—model improvements since November 2025 have made AI coding genuinely viable, not theoretical. Non-engineers at companies like Craft Docs and OpenAI are now using AI agents for customer support, marketing, HR, and finance work, not just engineering.