David Heinemeier Hansson
Created Ruby on Rails in 2003 and serves as chief technology officer and co-owner of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and HEY. His commentary spans web de...
“There are actually quite a few people in this world who are quite good at having some taste and some vision and an eye for where things should go, but did not have the talent or competence to do implementation, did not have the funds to do implementation.”
REWORK · Startups & Venture · August 2026
David Heinemeier Hansson was discussing who AI coding tools actually threaten. His view: the real shift isn't agents replacing product builders, it's that people with taste and vision but no ability to build now can bring ideas to life themselves.
Transcript
I also think it's interesting that I've seen so many unattractive products, unattractive apps. And yes, it could be programmed by AI, but there is a design element of taste that I don't think we've gotten to quite yet.
I think that's actually the main charge against slob, which is this framing for AI just producing a bunch of stuff. No, no, the slob is not coming from the agents. It's coming from you. It's coming from you, the instructor of the agents that you don't
have the vision and the eye for developing something good. And why would it be otherwise, right? Like, this is why you have product designers sit down and think carefully about building things. It's not just about making something happen. That is the big change that has happened. And I do think that that's perhaps also the other flank of this that's very interesting. There are actually quite a few people in this world who are quite good at having some taste and some vision and an eye for where things should go, but did not have the talent or competence to do implementation, did not have the funds to do implementation. So at least for the foreseeable future, I think that's the bigger threat to anyone running a software company is that someone else, another human out there is suddenly capable of making their ideas come true. I'm actually quite certain that if AI had been around in, say, 2000, when Jason put the post out for a programming question that I answered and we started working together, I'm not so sure…
Okay, let's go to this question. It's an email from Alex. Hi, Jason and David. It seems that the two of you promote your business through your own personal brands, most notably on X, although I'm sure you're also probably on LinkedIn. I'm starting a business soon, and I always thought that I wanted…
I mean, I don't think there's such a thing as a personal brand, by the way. I've always been bugged by that whole thing. It's just me talking on the internet. Where do I work? I work here. What do I talk about? I mean, that is your brand.
Like your style of writing, your personality, the things you're saying.
More from REWORK
