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Reading List More from David Heinemeier Hansson
There'll always be more emails in need of reply, more meetings to attend, and more updates to read. A person can fill the entire workweek with these tasks over and over again. But to stay sane and sharp, you must pay yourself first by doing the work that actually means something to you. I feel this acutely as someone responsible to employees, customers, followers, and readers. I could do nothing all day but check up on projects, people, and posts, but my brain would quickly check out if it was just doing that. So quite frequently, I just don't. Don't check in, don't check up, and instead dive into the work that checks my own intellectual boxes. Programming for the love of it. Experimenting for the hell of it. Researching for the fun of it. In another age, I might have been tempted to apologize for such privilege, but screw that. Privilege is wonderful. You should do your best to earn more of it. Even if you have to carve it out of the bare rocks around you. Ironically, the best way to do that is also to choose to always pay yourself first, however little at first. By solving your own problems, tickling your own interests, chasing your own curiosity. That's where you'll find the motivation to elevate your talent. To turn interest into competency. And once you've developed some competency, you'll be rewarded with more privilege to build it further. This is the virtuous circle of merit. There'll always be an endless list of work that could be done. You'll never get through it all and onto your own priorities, if you continue to put them at the bottom.
The first Rails World in Amsterdam was a roaring success back in 2023. Tickets sold out in 45 minutes, the atmosphere was electric, and The Rails Foundation set a new standard for conference execution in the Ruby community. So when we decided to return to the Dutch Capital for the third edition of the conference this year, the expectations were towering. And yet, Amanda Perino, our executive director and event organizer extraordinaire, managed to outdo herself, and produced an even better show this year. The venue we returned to was already at capacity the first time around, but Amanda managed to fit a third more attendees by literally using slimmer chairs! And I didn't hear any complaints the folks who had to sit a little closer together in order for more people to enjoy the gathering. The increased capacity didn't come close to satisfy the increased demand, though. This year, tickets sold out in less than two minutes. Crazy. But for the 800+ people who managed to secure a pass, I'm sure it felt worth the refresh-the-website scramble to buy a ticket. And, as in years past, Amanda's recording crew managed to turn around post-production on my keynote in less than 24 hours, so anyone disappointed with missing out on a ticket could at least be in the loop on all the awesome new Rails stuff we were releasing up to and during the conference. Every other session was recorded too, and will soon be on the Rails YouTube channel. You can't stream the atmosphere, the enthusiasm, and the genuine love of Ruby on Rails, though. I was once again blown away by just how many incredible people and stories we have in this ecosystem. From entrepreneurs who've built million (or billion!) dollar businesses on Rails, to programmers who've been around the framework for decades, to people who just picked it up this year. It was a thrill to meet all of them, to take hundreds of selfies, and to talk about Ruby, Rails, and the Omarchy expansion pack for hours on the hallway track! I've basically stopped doing prepared presentations at conferences, but Rails World is the one exception. I really try my best to put on a good show, present the highlights of what we've been working on in the past year at 37signals, and transfer the never-ending enthusiasm I continue to feel for this framework, this programming language, and this ecosystem. True, I may occasionally curse that commitment in the weeks leading up to the conference, but the responsibility is always rewarded during and after the execution with a deep sense of satisfaction. Not everyone is so lucky as I've been to find their life's work early in their career, and see it continue to blossom over the decades. I'm eternally grateful that I have. Of course, there's been ups and downs over the years — nothing is ever just a straight line of excitement up and to the right! — but we're oh-so-clearly on the up-up-up part of that curve at the moment. I don't know whether it's just the wind or the whims, but Rails is enjoying an influx of a new generation of programmers at the moment. No doubt it helps when I get to wax poetically about Ruby for an hour with Lex Fridman in front of an audience of millions. No doubt Shopify's continued success eating the world of ecommerce helps. No doubt the stability, professionalism, and execution from The Rails Foundation is an aid. There are many auxiliary reasons why we're riding a wave at the moment, but key to it all is also that Ruby on Rails is simply really, really good! Next year, with RailsConf finished, it's time to return to the US. Amanda has picked a great spot in Austin, we're planning to dramatically expand the capacity, but I also fully expect that demand will continue to rise, especially in the most prosperous and successful market for Rails. Thanks again to all The Rails Foundation members who believed in the vision for a new institution back in 2022. It looks like a no-brainer to join such a venture now, given the success of Rails World and everything else, but it actually took guts to sign on back then. I approached quite a few companies at that time who could see the value, but couldn't find the courage to support our work, as our industry was still held hostage to a band of bad ideas and terrible ideologies. All that nonsense is thankfully now long gone in the Rails world. We're enjoying a period of peak unity, excitement, progress, and determination to continue to push for end-to-end problem solving, open source, and freedom. I can't tell you how happy it makes me feel when I hear from yet another programmer who credits Ruby on Rails with finding joy and beauty in the writing web applications because of what I started over 22 years ago. It may sound trite, but it's true: It's an honor and a privilege. I hope to carry this meaningful burden for as long as my intellectual legs still let me stand. See you next year in Austin? I hope so!
Omarchy has been improving at a furious pace. Since it was first released on June 26, I've pushed out 18(!) new releases together with a rapidly growing community of collaborators, users, and new-to-Linux enthusiasts. We have about 3,500 early adopters on the Omarchy Discord, 250 pull requests processed, and one heck of an awesome Arch + Hyprland Linux environment to show for it! The latest release is 1.11.0, and it brings an entirely overhauled control menu to the experience. Now everything is controlled through a single, unified system that makes it super fast to operate Omarchy's settings and options through the keyboard. It's exactly the kind of hands-off-the-mouse operation that I've always wanted, and with Linux, I've been able to build it just to my tastes. It's a delight. There's really something special going on in Linux at the moment. Arch has been around for twenty years, but with Hyprland on top, it's been catapulted in front of an entirely new audience. Folks who'd never thought that open source could be able to deliver a desktop experience worth giving up Windows or macOS for. Of course, Linux isn't for everyone. It's still an adventure! An awesome, teach-you-about-computers adventure, but not everyone is into computer adventures. Plenty of people are content with a computer appliance where they never have to look under the hood. All good. Microsoft and Apple have those people covered. But the world is a big place! And in that big place, there are a growing number of computer enthusiasts who've grown very disillusioned with both Microsoft and Apple. Folks who could be enticed to give Linux a look, if the barrier was a little lower and the benefits a little clearer. Those are the folks I'm building Omarchy for.
I've never seen so many developers curious about leaving the Mac and giving Linux a go. Something has really changed in the last few years. Maybe Linux just got better? Maybe powerful mini PCs made it easier? Maybe Apple just fumbled their relationship with developers one too many times? Maybe it's all of it. But whatever the reason, the vibe shift is noticeable. This is why the future is so hard to predict! People have been joking about "The Year of Linux on the Desktop" since the late 90s. Just like self-driving cars were supposed to be a thing back in 2017. And now, in the year of our Lord 2025, it seems like we're getting both! I also wouldn't underestimate the cultural influence of a few key people. PewDiePie sharing his journey into Arch and Hyprland with his 110 million followers is important. ThePrimeagen moving to Arch and Hyprland is important. Typecraft teaching beginners how to build an Arch and Hyprland setup from scratch is important (and who I just spoke to about Omarchy). Gabe Newell's Steam Deck being built on Arch and pushing Proton to over 20,000 compatible Linux games is important. You'll notice a trend here, which is that Arch Linux, a notoriously "difficult" distribution, is at the center of much of this new engagement. Despite the fact that it's been around since 2003! There's nothing new about Arch, but there's something new about the circles of people it's engaging. I've put Arch at the center of Omarchy too. Originally just because that was what Hyprland recommended. Then, after living with the wonders of 90,000+ packages on the community-driven AUR package repository, for its own sake. It's really good! But while Arch (and Hyprland) are having a moment amongst a new crowd, it's also "just" Linux at its core. And Linux really is the star of the show. The perfect, free, and open alternative that was just sitting around waiting for developers to finally have had enough of the commercial offerings from Apple and Microsoft. Now obviously there's a taste of "new vegan sees vegans everywhere" here. You start talking about Linux, and you'll hear from folks already in the community or those considering the move too. It's easy to confuse what you'd like to be true with what is actually true. And it's definitely true that Linux is still a niche operating system on the desktop. Even among developers. Apple and Microsoft sit on the lion's share of the market share. But the mind share? They've been losing that fast. The window is open for a major shift to happen. First gradually, then suddenly. It feels like morning in Linux land!
Over the years, I've learned not to question inspiration. To simply let it drive when it shows up with a full tank. Quite often, I don't exactly know where we're going or even why we're going, but it's repeatedly taken me to just the right place at just the right time, so now I just hop in and say: Let's go! Case in point: Arch + Hyprland. It's been over a year since I created Omakub to smooth out my own exit path from macOS to Linux, and in the process, helped thousands of others enjoy a beautiful, preconfigured, and relatively familiar desktop experience with Ubuntu. And I continue to think this is an excellent choice for Linux, especially for first-time Mac and Windows defectors. But this weekend, I just happened to be home alone, and the hype around Arch + Hyprland got the better of me. While Ubuntu is all about being a friendly place for newcomers to Linux, Arch + Hyprland is the exact opposite: It's Linux on hard mode! At least that's the reputation, and there's certainly something to that. The Arch ISO literally just dumps you into a terminal with scarcely any direction. Just getting on the Wi-Fi requires learning the arcane command-line options for the iwctl terminal configurator. But besides iwctl, it's actually not that bad anymore. We now have a cheat code for installing Arch in the form of archinstall. It's a terminal interface for getting all the bits like picking a disk and creating the first user done in the correct order, without having to set aside an entire evening just to get the OS installed. So it didn't take long to get Arch up and running. That doesn't get you much further, though! By default, Arch is about as minimal as it gets. There's no default graphical interface. There are no niceties. Not even wget or curl by default! It really is just a bare-bones installation of Linux. But on the other hand, Arch is blessed with the AUR — a Wikipedia-style, community-maintained package management system that seems to have literally every piece of software ever released on Linux, and always in the latest version. A quarter of Omakub is trying to work around the fact that helpful tools like Alacritty or LazyGit or whatever rarely have official packages for Ubuntu, so you're left doing a lot of manual scripting to get everything a developer would want from a modern Linux setup. Not so with the AUR! So that's Arch. But Hyprland is even more hilarious. It's a tiling window manager with something as rare in the Linux world as a keen focus on aesthetics! It looks like it was written by visual artists rather than neckbeards. And it's at the core of the modern r/unixporn Linux ricing subculture. That's not the funny part, though. The funny part is how ridiculously atomized the entire thing is. Hyprland comes with absolutely nothing out of the box. No login screen, no menu bar, no notification system, no file manager, no visual settings application. Just a text-based configuration file, a wiki, and an outline on a map for how to design your own adventure. This means that if you're interested in running Hyprland, and you intend to set it all up from scratch, you're probably signing up for at least a good 10+ hours — just to install and configure everything! Now, there are some precompiled setup scripts out there already, but most of them still require you to do a ton of manual legwork before you reach that beautiful summit of a complete system. So while the downside of Arch + Hyprland is that literally every last detail requires you to make a choice and a config file to move on, it's also its upside: you can change EVERYTHING! And the core window tiling magic of Hyprland is one of the most intoxicating ways of using a computer that I've ever experienced. It looks amazing; it feels amazing (if you prefer using a keyboard instead of a mouse!). I've poured hours and hours into this quest over the weekend, and yet I'm still not even done with my first Arch + Hyprland build! My login screen looks like shit. I haven't decided on a final menu bar configuration. But what is working — the basic tiling flow and look — is so nice that the inspiration keeps driving the project forward. Which, of course, I've already decided to codify. I'm not going through all this work to set up a beautiful, preconfigured, fully-functional, out-of-the-box Arch + Hyprland combo and then not share it with anyone who's curious (and might not have 10–20 hours for this kind of side quest available in their schedule). So of course I registered a domain and found a way to draw some ASCII art: Omarchy is on the way!
More in programming
Reading my recent computing retrospective, I realised there was a big section missing: the people in my life that made an impact and helped shape my career. Outside my immediate family, one person made an outsized contribution, and I’m fairly certain that without his influence my life would have taken a very different path. The fact that I’m still here in 2026, still writing code and being fortunate enough to have a career in something I love is testament to him. So I’d like to take a few moments to talk about my old secondary school teacher, George Dryden. Denied Back in 1995, I had a problem. I knew I wanted to study computing at university and build a career out of my passion, but there was a snag. For those unfamiliar with the UK schooling system, when you’re 15-16 you take a set of GCSE exams in a broad range of subjects. After that, you pick around 3 subjects to really focus on over a period of 2 years. These are called A Levels, and they are a big step up and are meant to prepare you for a degree-level course at university. Admission to university is also governed by these results - if you want to study computing, you’re going to need a computing A-Level, and most universities will only accept you (or “make an offer”) if you achieve a certain grade. And whilst I had taken computing at a GCSE level, my school did not offer a computing A-Level course. I instead had to settle on “Design & Technology”, which just didn’t inspire me. Instead of working on my portfolio and projects, I spent most of my time daydreaming and writing code on the Acorn Archimedes computers that were the staple of every 90s UK school. No disrespect to the teachers - they were all awesome - but it just wasn’t for me. I was miserable, and by the end of my first year, I was well on my way to failing outright with my entire future plans seemingly going up in smoke. Someone noticed That’s when George stepped in. He’d taught me computing right the way through my GCSEs, and with no A-Level course on offer, that was officially where his involvement was supposed to have ended. It didn’t. He had noticed my constant presence in the computing labs - before and after school, during lunch breaks, free “study” periods - working on some little pet project or digging into RISC OS internals. I remember him as warm, with a wicked, dry sense of humour, and a refreshingly spiky attitude to authority - I always got the sense he’d worked out for himself which rules were worth taking seriously and which ones weren’t. And he always had time for me. I spent years pestering him with questions that had nothing to do with anything on the syllabus, and he’d always find a way to answer them that actually made sense. He was just as supportive of my odd little obsessions. At one point I’d got deep into the BBS scene, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, and decided what the school really needed was an internal BBS running on its own network. So I wrote one. It was deeply cringeworthy, obviously - but George helped me put posters up around the school advertising it, and even gave it a mention in assembly one morning. I think about five people in total ever checked it out. It didn’t matter: a teacher had stood up in front of the entire school and treated my weird little project like it was worth something, and that was a hugely validating moment for me. Off the books He recognised the passion, and eventually he made a suggestion: What if I quit the Design and Technology course, and instead attempt the A-level course myself? Personally, I also suspect he was enjoying himself. There was some internal school politics behind why computing wasn’t offered at A-Level in the first place - I never knew the details - and I think the prospect of one of his students simply going out and getting the qualification anyway appealed to him on two separate levels. It would get me where I wanted to go, and it would wind up exactly the right people. It wouldn’t be easy, he warned. The school would be against it, plus it was a two-year course which I’d have to cram into one year. I’d have to do it all myself - studying, lesson planning, coursework - he couldn’t help me in an official capacity, but he said he’d advocate for me and help where he could. If I had assignments, he’d send them off to be graded and would give feedback in his own time. He’d enter me in for the exams and also gave me a set of keys to the computer lab so I could use it whenever I needed. It was the first time anybody outside my own family had really shown faith in my abilities and encouraged me to take a stand. It was a pivotal moment for me - I realised if I wanted something badly enough I would have to fight for it, but I could still make it happen. I didn’t have to take “NO” for an answer - a lesson I think I picked up from watching him as much as from anything he ever actually said to me. After a few weeks of dithering, I took the jump. I remember a few awkward meetings with the school administration but thanks to his behind-the-scenes work, I was soon following my dream. An intense year And yes, it was bloody hard work. I had to condense an entire two year course into under a year, be disciplined enough to produce my own study plan, and be critical enough of my own shortcomings that I could focus my study where it was needed. I pretty much lived and breathed it for months straight and was more-or-less a permanent fixture in the labs or school library poring over my course books. I’d make lists of questions and chat to George over lunch, and he’d provide guidance and encouragement. It was a lonely way to learn with no classmates to compare notes with, no lessons to turn up to, and right up until the end I had no real idea whether any of it was good enough - but bit by bit, it started to feel like something I could actually pull off. And sure enough, in the late spring of 1996, I sat down in an exam hall with my fellow students, the only one with an A-Level computing question paper in front of me. The final exam went by in a blur - I can only remember a few of the questions now (and a peculiar obsession with the Pascal language) - but I do remember the euphoria as the invigilator called “time’s up, pens down, close your papers NOW”. I had done it. A few nerve-wracking months later, my Mum drove me into school to pick up my results. I ripped open the envelope and saw it - I’d passed with an A grade! I literally ran up the stairs to George’s office next to the computing labs to thank him personally. I’d taken my camera into school to take a few last photos for memory’s sake and snapped this photo of him before I walked out the school gates for the last time: A different path Because of him, I managed to get into my university of choice, studying computing with a focus on networks. Because of that, I landed my first job working as a “webmaster”, and my career since has been one of the highlights of my life. All these years later, it’s a real privilege to be able to get up each morning and actively look forward to working in an industry I love. Without George stepping up for me and encouraging me to believe in myself, none of that would have happened. I wouldn’t have had the career I have, and I wouldn’t be where I am now. I met my wife when we both worked at a software company - she sat at the desk behind me - so even my home and family life can be traced back to that spring of 1996. And the A-Level itself was only half of what I took away from that year. The qualification opened the door to university, but the lesson that came with it was every bit as important: that a “no” isn’t always the end of it, and that sometimes the answer can be argued with. I’m so proud of what I managed to achieve all those years ago, and even more thankful to have had someone like George in my life to put me on the right track. Mr. Dryden I did see him again after I left. He drank in one of my local pubs - a pub I’d been going to for a good while before I was technically old enough to be in it - and I’d say hello if I spotted him in there, mostly in the months before I moved away to university. After that it was only a handful of times. For years I’d find myself scanning the room whenever I was back home and in for a pint, half expecting him to be at the bar. At some point I stopped seeing him altogether and eventually moved across the country. The trouble was I never really knew how to talk to him outside of school. He was always Mr. Dryden, or just “Sir”, I don’t think I ever once called him George to his face! I was (and still am if I’m honest) fairly socially awkward, and I never worked out how to phrase the thing I actually wanted to say: that he had changed the entire direction of my life, and I wasn’t sure he knew it. So instead I’d say hello, and ask how he was, talk about nothing much, and go back to my friends. Epilogue Sadly, 3 years ago now, I opened the latest issue of my old school alumni newsletter to read that he’d passed away. The photo at the start of this article was taken from his obituary article and I read that he’d had a long illness and had suffered from dementia at the end. I did write to him years ago by email - I don’t know if he ever got it, or was in any capacity to understand what he’d done for me, but I hope so. There’s an old saying by one of my favourite authors (Terry Pratchett) that “no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away”. In one of his books, a character keeps the memory of his son alive by passing his name along a series of telegraph towers. It’s in that spirit that I’m writing this post - I debated it for many years as it’s very personal to me and I also have no contact with any of George’s family so I have no idea what they would make of it all. But even though it’s 30+ years ago now, I will never forget him or what he did for me - and at least now, if someone searches his name it’ll be recorded here for as long as I’m alive and running this site. Thank you, Sir. George Dryden 1942-2023
Let’s step inside the kernel and understand how it implements copy-on-write and what are its implications for the performance of user-space systems
Yesterday, I received this email as a response to You Can't Vibe Code Love. It's such a remarkable and powerful statement that I asked permission to share it here, in its entirety, with personal information redacted: Hey Jeff, Hope you and your family are doing well.
A frustrated Reddit post about being a condom between an AI and production made the rounds in our team. Here is why I think the opposite is true and what it means for how we review code, plan work and think.
And here we are three years after I wrote about the Google Pixel Fold being announced, followed now with the announcement of the iPhone Duo...(I have questions about the naming by the way). Four years ago I was talking about web primitives in the platform for the Surface Duo. My how time flies. There are CSS media features, a Viewport Segments API, a Device Posture API but Chromium based browsers are the only ones currently supporting these things. I haven't been able to find any signal yet on whether Safari will support these things in the web platform as the developer docs focus on application development. If you're interested in trying out the platform features, you can emulate the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold in the developer tools. And if you're thinking, do I really have to have my website adapt to two screens? The answer is no. Adding a design to an application or dual screen makes sense if you have an experience that has two simulataneous contexts that are useful e.g. a list of email messages/inbox on one screen, an open message, email thread or email composer on the other. Here's one of my talks from 2022 if you're interested in learning more about what's available in the browser for dual screen/foldable devices. Happy building :)
