DHH says 37signals went "pencils down": 150k lines in August with agents vs 30k/year by hand
Recent-Tangerine2745 · reddit · 2026-09-26
DHH told a room of developers that 37signals has effectively gone "pencils down" — writing code by hand is now the exception, not the default.
- He historically wrote 30k lines of production code per year; in August alone he produced 150k lines using agents
- The company is rebuilding HEY with native clients and a Rust backend via agent-driven development
The poster argues that "AI can't code" is becoming harder to defend. The more interesting question now: which parts of software engineering should humans still do themselves — architecture, testing, security, and review remain human territory, but the line keeps moving.
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