September 24, 2026
Hand-written code pays off less and less: DHH built Omarchy Quattro without it
On September 24, DHH said that hand-written code no longer pays off for most programmers. In Omarchy Quattro, he did not write a single line of code in the release by hand.
DHH
@dhh
Pencils down, folks. For most programmers at most companies, writing code by hand is no longer worthwhile. But the future of building software has never been brighter. Just don't get discouraged at this wonderful moment!
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For 25 years, writing code by hand paid off in flexible architecture and fewer bugs. Now DHH delegates implementation to AI agents and retains the decisions that change the product's structure.
Architecture remains. In Quattro, DHH reviewed the critical model layer line by line, but did not look at parts of the UI and helper code. He believes good architecture lowers the cost of the next change: the agent does not have to understand the entire project from scratch each time.
DHH is already splitting tasks among 8 subagents: he says individual tasks now take from one-fifth to one-tenth of the time they used to.
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