He’s passionate about programming and productivity. So how does David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) feel about AI-assisted vibe coding?For his 474th podcast, Lex Fridman performed a special six-hour interview with DHH, the legendary creator of Ruby on Rails, who proved to be a shrewd observer of our moment in time.As Fridman’s 4.7 million subscribers listened in, the two shared their own hard-won opinions about AI coding tools, vibe coding — and the future of programming itself.And through it all, Hansson remained positive, delightfully opinionated — and as Fridman pointed out, “always fun to talk.”This was one of the longest, most interesting conversations I’ve ever had with another human in my life. Lots of great podcasts go deep, but @lexfridman takes you to the bottom of the Mariana trench!— DHH (@DHH), July 12, 2025Chiseling Code With Your Bare HandsIn short, DHH says he loves collaborating with AI: for creating drafts, looking up APIs or even getting a second opinion. But he uses it differently than most people, always keeping his AI-generated code in a separate window. “I don’t let it drive my code. I’ve tried that — I’ve tried the Cursors and the Windsurfs, and I don’t enjoy that way of writing. … I can literally feel competence draining out of my fingers!”He’d had an experience where he realized he kept asking AI for the same syntax, over and over. “By not typing it, I wasn’t learning it. … And I got a little scared. … Am I no longer learning if I’m not typing?”So in the end, he’d decided, “You learn with your fingers.” Just like learning to play the guitar, “programming has to be learned in part by the actual typing. … If you don’t have your fingers in the sauce, the source, you are going to lose touch with it. There’s just no other way.“I don’t want that because I enjoy it too much.”For programmers who like to code, it’s not just about outcomes, about the programs that ultimately get created, DHH says. There’s also an emotion that goes along with it — that very human moment of expression. And that “joy,” as DHH puts it, “is to type the code myself.“If I promote myself out of programming, I turn myself into a project manager — a project manager of a murder of AI crows, as I wrote the other day.“I could have become a project manager 20 years ago if I didn’t care to write code myself and I just wanted outcomes.”DHH on Vibe CodingInterviewer Fridman wondered if AI coding tools should just offer “learning mode” to “basically force you to type certain things.” But Fridman seems more comfortable with AI, adding “I think vibe coding is a skill,” and warning that “For an experienced programmer, it’s too easy to dismiss vibe coding.”“I agree, I wouldn’t dismiss it,” DHH began. But as he sees it, vibe coding is only learning “in this superficial way that feels like learning but is completely empty calories.” He reminds young programmers that “If you can just vibe code it, you’re not a programmer.” And if you’re thinking of it as a career skill, just remember: “Anyone could do it.”But couldn’t someone hone their skill at pair programming with AI until they’re outperforming coders writing from scratch? And with the right prompts, couldn’t you still create code with your own favored style and structure? DHH seems skeptical. “You cannot give someone pointers if you don’t know how to do it.“The capacity to be a good editor is the reward you get from being a good doer.”DHH tried using vibe coding “to build something real” and shared what he’s seen: that “you actually fail really early.” He’s found that vibe coding is “able to build a veneer … something that looks like it works, but it’s flawed in all sorts of ways.” Beyond the obvious horror stories about AI-generated code leaking API keys or storing passwords in plain text, “its capacity to get lost in its own labyrinth is very great right now. … You want to change something, and it becomes a game of Whac-A-Mole real quick.” When fixing one mistake, it can end up introducing more.Although even there, DHH sees something that’s remarkably human-like. “The kind of mistakes it’s making are the kind of mistakes that junior programmers make all the time!”AI All Day (While Learning and Having Fun)DHH isn’t avoiding AI. “I also use AI all day long. …” he clarifies. “In fact, I’d say the way I like to use AI, I’m getting smarter every day. … Because I’m using AI to have it explain things to me!”But there’s another advantage. DHH says AI finally lets him enjoy pair programming. “I’m an introvert!” In the past, he’s only been able to do pair programming “for about five minutes before I want to jump off a bridge. … AI allows me to have all the best of that experience!”Fridman agrees, saying AI is “like a buddy that’s really being positive and is very smart and is challenging me to think … Even if I never use the code it generates, I’m already a better programmer.” And he’s having more fun.And DHH had a similar experience. “What it’s made more fun to me is to be a beginner again.” Having it there gives him confidence — more faith in what he can accomplish. Though he hasn’t done iOS programming in years, “I feel highly confident now that I could sit down with AI and I could have something in the App Store by the end of the week.“I would not have that confidence unless I had a pair programming buddy like AI.”The FutureIt’s possible that one day, AI-assisted programming will mean more programming gets done, paradoxically increasing the amount spent on human programmers. But DHH says he’s also open to the possibility that AI could do to programming what cars did to horses — turn programming into something we only turn to recreationally. “That could be the future for programming, for manual programming — entirely possible.”And he’s not troubled by it. People still enjoy playing the guitar, even though recordings have made every song instantly available.Fridman compares it to an old-time cowboy on a horse, who’s being passed on the road by cars. “I think it is important to have that humility,” DHH agrees, “that what you are good at may no longer be what society values. This has happened a million times in history.”At the age of 45, DHH is already taking the long view. “I’ve had the good fortune to have been a programmer for nearly 30 years. That’s a great run.” He says he’s been “blessed” with decades of doing what he likes best in an economically viable way.“And if that’s over tomorrow, I shouldn’t look at that with regret. I should look at it with gratitude.”The Next Generation’s ProgrammersBut when it comes to young programmers, DHH says “It’s absolutely not enough” to learn how to have AI generate your code. “Not if you want to learn, not if you want to become better at it.” He uses the phrase “tap monkey” — selecting “Yes” over and over again — and warns that ultimately anyone can do that, and “That’s not a marketable skill.”But then he also adds his standard caveat. “Nobody fucking knows anything. No one can predict even six months ahead.” And specifically, he thinks “Right now, we’re probably at peak AI future hype,” with its promise evident and the “mind-boggling” way AI generates output “eerily reminiscent of humans.” (DHH remembered feeling “a little scared” by the “incredibly human” way DeepSeek seemed to formulate its responses.)But he also remembers expecting to be living in a VR world within five years of watching the 1995 movie “Lawnmower Man.” “That didn’t happen.” (Although his oldest child does now enjoy playing the VR game “Gorilla Tag.”) “It’s really hard to predict the future. Because we just don’t know.“We can be so excited in the moment, because we’re drawing a line through early dots on a chart … just going up and to the right. And sometimes, it’s just flattened out.” And here he points out how much of our critical infrastructure still runs on COBOL.From that, he draws two lessons:We should be humble about predicting the future.“It’s possible for society to lose a competence it still needs because it’s chasing the future.”And this leads him to some almost Zen-like advice. “If you like programming? You should learn programming. Now, is that going to be a career forever? I don’t know. But what’s going to be a career forever? Who knows!” As predictions keep changing about which jobs will be replaced by AI, “No one knows anything.”While it’s possible big changes may be coming, there’s also this raging uncertainty, and “You have to then position yourself for the future in such a way that it doesn’t matter. … You pick a profession or a path where if it turns out that you have to retool and reskill, you’re not going to regret the path you took.”This has been a principle for DHH throughout his life. So while wishing success for every new project at his company 37 Signals, his mental model also always includes gratitude for “another opportunity to write beautiful Ruby code, to explore greenfield domains, to learn something new, to build a system I want, even if no one else wants it.“What a blessing. What a privilege.”So should programming students spend their time on vibe coding — learning enough to manually fix code that’s generated by AI? DHH still thinks it’s more educational to write code from scratch. “You’re not going to get fit by watching fitness videos,” he offers as an analogy. “You have to do the sit-ups.”“Programming, understanding, learning almost anything requires you to do. Humans are not built to absorb information in a way that transforms into skills by just watching others from afar.“Ironically, it seems AI is actually quite good at that. But humans are not!”Enjoy the whole six-hour discussion.The post DHH on AI, Vibe Coding and the Future of Programming appeared first on The New Stack.