David Heinemeier Hansson (born 1979), known as DHH, is a Danish programmer who created Ruby on Rails. His opinionated approach to web development and business influenced both technology and startup culture.
Creating Rails
While building Basecamp for 37signals (now 37signals), DHH extracted the web framework he’d developed into Ruby on Rails. Released in 2004, Rails demonstrated dramatic productivity improvements for web development.
The 15-Minute Blog
DHH’s screencast showing how to build a blog in 15 minutes with Rails became a defining moment for web development. The demo’s impact was similar to Steve Jobs’ product reveals—it showed what was possible.
Philosophy
DHH advocates strongly held positions:
- Convention over configuration
- Integrated systems over microservices
- Small teams and profitable companies
- Questioning common industry practices
Beyond Rails
With Jason Fried, DHH wrote influential books:
- “Getting Real”
- “Remote: Office Not Required”
- “Rework”
- “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work”
Impact
Rails influenced how the industry thinks about frameworks. The concepts of sensible defaults, RESTful design, and developer happiness spread far beyond Ruby.