Rails originator roasted over Rust boosterism

Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson presented a keynote at Rails World 2026 that suggested artificial intelligence has largely eliminated the need for developers to manually write code. Afterward, DHH posted a test comparing the performance of his company's Campfire group chat app rewritten in Elixir, Go, and Rust, alongside the original Ruby on Rails version.

The Rust implementation outperformed the others across five tasks, including searching and posting messages. While DHH didn't disclose which AI services he used for the rewrites, many observers suspected he optimized the Rust results compared to the other languages. The Rust version handled 36,260 requests per second, while Ruby on Rails managed only 241, Elixir handled 722, and Go handled 3,860.

DHH argued that rewriting applications in Rust, often with AI assistance, could lead to significant performance improvements. However, many critics questioned the validity of DHH's benchmarks, suggesting he gave the Rust code disproportionate attention compared to the other languages.