What About Rails?

Rails developer Jared Norman's critique responds to the Rails World 2026 keynote by DHH, the creator of the Rails web-application framework. In Norman's account, the keynote announced that 37signals is rebuilding Hey as native apps with a Rust backend largely written by AI, and that the one moment it spoke directly to Rails developers it said nothing about Rails.

Norman's question is what the vision for Rails is now and who will drive it. They raise the possibility that Rails is simply done and needs only maintenance, and write that if so, someone should say it; otherwise, the community should hear where the framework is headed. Norman treats optimism about AI as no substitute for that direction. This is Norman's reading of the keynote, which was not reviewed here.