Be a Loser

Sergio Visinoni challenges Rails creator DHH’s call for software engineers to embrace AI coding and stop being “losers” who write code themselves. The central objection is that DHH treats programming as purely economic: if machines produce code faster, human coding has lost its purpose. Visinoni counters with car racing, which makes little sense as transportation but remains worthwhile for competition, craft, and enjoyment. He also argues that photography did not eliminate painting; it freed painters to pursue artistic goals beyond producing portraits. By the same reasoning, AI may change programming without making the practice of writing code pointless, and DHH offers no substantive basis for insulting those who continue.

Visinoni also criticizes DHH’s treatment of AI’s risks. By focusing on speculative superintelligence, he says, DHH sidesteps present harms: environmental costs, economic and hardware pressures, workplace distress, declining skills, low-paid labor used for AI training, and degraded online content. The piece connects this omission to DHH’s willingness to benefit from Rust code generated by AI despite his stated dislike of Rust: outsourcing the work lets him enjoy its advantages without confronting the labor or costs behind them. Visinoni sees this as a broader tech-industry pattern of externalizing harm. He concludes that “loser” is a bullying label for dissenters, not an argument, and faults DHH’s pro-market rhetoric for sitting uneasily beside his pressure to conform.