Honestly Rails being finished it's that bad. If you aren't writing the code by hand what benefit is it really bringing to you now?

Rails niche was fast setup/low starting out costs and relatively constrained/medium maintenance costs. To get this you traded performance and type system. The latter usually resulted in increased maintenance costs as test suites ballooned to compensate.

These days fast setup is simply a product of AI, every ecosystem now offers fast setup. Maintenance costs are now about how token efficient it is to find and fix problems. Test suites are going to be huge everywhere now but there is some chance languages that require less to accomplish more will win on token efficiency and be favored.

Humans aren't the dominant factor in programming language design or selection anymore, that is a fact at this point it just hasn't sunk in for everyone yet.

We are only ~6mo in to agents being good enough to write code. A year from now our profession will be entirely changed. Agents will get better (how much? don't know) but importantly they will definitely get cheaper and access will be broader. Which is really the point DHH was trying to make.

Access and economics are finally going to do what no-code failed to do, which is democratise software. Maybe not to the point that everyone writes code or even that shit programmers are good, but it will enable shit programmers to write Rust which was literally impossible 6mo ago and they will have better programs as a result.

Which is the other thing he touched on. Good programmers are going to excel here and great programmers are going to dominate. I'm already seeing the 10x programmers hit 100x and 1000x with more access doesn't seem out of sight. It's also restoring the will to create in a lot of people that lost the passion for the mechanical part of programming, unlocking the experience and skill of these people that were otherwise considering cashing in the bag is huge.

So yes. Rails is done but what is coming next is way more exciting. I'm with DHH here, be glad it happened but get moving on where things are going to be instead of clinging to the past.

100% agree