Huh, apparently he is a “white supremacist” for posts like this?

https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance...

I missed all this drama, it does seem like there is an echo chamber forming over on Bluesky…

He's voicedly MAGA-adjacent, has often written against the evils of multiculturalism and how happy he was about Trump winning the elections.

I don't think he's a white supremacist, but it is understandable that some people don't like his ideas.

The totalitarian mindset will not even tolerate you “platforming” people who don’t sufficiently agree with it (even if you agree on 90% of things).

Someone linked an article above that is worth a read - He's said some pretty horrific stuff about minority groups & is echoing discredited sentiment on immigrants and other minorities. It's worth a read.

https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...

"The Ruby community has a DHH problem":

https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...

Is he known to, like, reference his politics in his conference talks or something?

He is a consistent pot stirrer, whether it's his politics or his vendettas, and he never really stops talking about them

Is it ok to put Goebbels on a stage if he isn't talking politics?

I couldn't care less if Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or even Bob Monkhouse[2] were pushing open source patches and contributing talks, as long as they:

- do not turn away from debate - do not turn to or espouse violence[1] - and their contributions were of merit

Since DHH has done none of that then the answer is "yes, it's okay to put him on a stage to talk about tech".

[1] I thank Karl Popper for showing the way here with his Paradox of tolerance.

[2] Bob was the master of self-deprecating jokes, I hope he would appreciate that one.

You may be a moron.

Is it okay to smear pretty normal people as Nazis for no good reason?

Tom Stuart gave a really good lightning talk about this a decade ago, which is very respectful and has aged well https://tomstu.art/the-dhh-problem

It's not just about his politics. DHH is reactionary, mean, dismissive of others' opinions. He acts more like a high school bully than a leader.

Since then, DHH has gone off the deep end with xenophobic, racist, and transphobic comments. I was drawn to the Ruby community because of its kindness and creativity, with people like why the lucky stiff and Jim Weirich. It is a lot less welcoming when DHH repeatedly uses his platform to say that I shouldn't exist or have equal rights.

> It is a lot less welcoming when DHH repeatedly uses his platform to say that I shouldn't exist or have equal rights.

Can you point to any of his blog posts that says this ?

He is not stupid enough to say that directly bit it's one google away to find stuff like.

I follow him on Twitter and guy is a bully and has opinions about stuff he has 0 knowledge about.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-social-media-censorship-era-is...

There are more

Like this one. You don't even have to read between the lines to see what is his attitude.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/gender-and-sexuality-alliances-in-...

Interesting. Things I think of as quite reasonable, though certainly with counter arguments, are to him fundamentally preposterous and not even worthy of reasonable consideration.

My kid goes to a very liberal California school. The main difference between it and my school growing up is that it is no longer acceptable to ostracize or beat up lgbtq kids or kids who are different in other ways. Part of that is because, gasp, the school builds acceptance into the curriculum. I wish I grew up now, it’s such a nicer time to be a weird nerd.

What percentage of people and parents in the world do you think agree with DHH here? My guess would be around 95%. I dont see any issues with his arguments, that is wholly inappropriate for schools.

the objections shown here seem quite reasonable and, apparently, reflect the will of the parents.

Omnicause stuff isn't popular.

More power to DHH’s pen, in this case. What he has written is not remotely controversial, but some will use it as evidence that he is trans-phobic.

Yeah, how about the one where he says Tommy Robinson was right? https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

How is his code?

I guess I’m so old that I remember not paying much attention to personal lives and looking at code contributions and collaboration behavior. I think that being a sensitive collaborator who builds changes was more relevant than swearing at people or saying rude things.

I once worked for a company where one developer hit another in the face with a keyboard. Was it wrong, yes of course. But we still delivered a pretty decent product.

I don’t really care if you, or others feel I should exist or not. Or whether they think I should or shouldn’t have rights, unless you mean permissions to change and maintain code.

> I don’t really care if you, or others feel I should exist or not. Or whether they think I should or shouldn’t have rights

Yes, but you don't really need to worry, because those things aren't a real threat to you. Imagine if you were a member of a minority group making up 1% of the population, with a government actively persecuting you.

Is DHH part of the government, one that is actively persecuting a minority? If not, then you're talking about someone who is not in power and not persecuting a minority (or anyone). How is that relevant?

Unfortunately, in the current political climate the stakes are much higher.

Supporting people that want to and are pushing for the government to kill you and your loved ones seems like such an odd thing for someone to do. Not even sure how to describe it.

The cancel culture is a cancer in open source and cancellers are utter scumbags.

Not wanting to work with a racist asshole isn't cancel culture. It's common sense.

Also, this isn't a new fucking phenomenon. I remember when Ellen DeGeneres came out as gay (before everyone knew what an ass she was), and it nearly destroyed her career. Or when the Dixie Chicks dared to criticized George Bush and it did ruin their career. The same people complaining about cancel culture now we're the ones doing the cancelling then.

I got into Ruby and the community in 2006.

I aspired to be like Jim. We all should.

He made time for anyone who wanted to engage him in a sincere discussion. He helped a lot of newer people. He wrote beautiful tools that we still use.

He embodied MINASWAN. That has been the core of Ruby's community.

DHH has been pretty damn far from that.

Did many of us find Ruby through Rails? Sure. Does that mean that Ruby should be stewarded by someone who is intolerant and therefore exclusionary? No.

That's the opposite of MINASWAN.

The Ruby community has long had a rift between two types of members, the really nice folks that take after Matz, and techbro assholes like DHH. The former have mostly tolerated the latter creating an ugly toxicity that the community has become known for, and is why I use Ruby, but have not involved myself with it. Zed Shaw, a well-known asshole himself, described it in this piece: https://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto

DHH has been going off the deep end with his rhetoric for years, the current political environment has made it so that he can't be ignored anymore.

> HH has been going off the deep end with his rhetoric for years, the current political environment has made it so that he can't be ignored anymore.

But Shopify is also right wing in its executive team, and via these move they appear to be support DHH:

https://pressprogress.ca/shopify-executives-right-wing-media...

https://disconnect.blog/the-conservative-tech-alliance-is-co...

And yeah, Shopify is going to protect DHH because DHH is on Shopify's board:

https://www.shopify.com/news/david-heinemeier-hansson-board

Just to add a bit of context here... DHH was added to the Shopify board last year. Shopify also brought in a CTO with very questionable actions and statements during multiple company townhalls and all-hands. He would be making wild statements on stream while VPs would be in the Slack channel trying to defuse and reframe. This was a big reason why I left Shopify last spring.

not everyone you disagree with is a nazi.

Sure, they don't like DHH. I never much liked him either (too opinionated for my taste), though Rails is a really good thing and honestly put Ruby on the map, and DHH deserves credit for that. But seriously, pull all their funding because of being platformed at RailsConf (_Rails_Conf, not _Ruby_Conf). Seems over-reactionary, and ultimately hurtful to the Ruby community (making them more dependent on Shopify).

Update: To be fair, I haven't followed DHH/Rails/Ruby community for the past decade (was very involved ~15 yrs ago), so my views may be outdated. Still I think pulling the funding doesn't help Ruby.

Its especially wild given how their action in pulling funding seems to have been a prime motivator for this power grab: in their attempt to boycott DHH, they quite literally handed him the keys to the kingdom.

It does imply an option here. For the affected ruby gems core team to strike up a sponsorship agreement and launch a forked ruby gems service. For developers who agree that the original team was treated terribly, it’s a one line code change at the top of our Gemfiles to get behind a new gem repository.

A "boycott" assumes voiced opinions, and I don't think we have anything public about why Sidekiq stopped sponsoring.

We assume it's linked to DHH because he's an asshole, but that's just our own theories.

I don't like DHH (for whatever reason), and I would never want to spend my own money on 'platforming' him. It seems pretty reasonable that someone/company applies discretion to which community events they sponsor.

Sure it feels good to pull money as a kneejerk reaction and virtue signalling, but it's still generally a good idea to think through the consequences of your actions.

We should be thankful a project like Sidekiq sponsored so much money over such a long period. Whatever reason they had to pull out, the blame should lie on the lack of other companies stepping in and keeping some power balance.

Probably the fact that DHH introduced Solid Queue to Rails which can replace Sidekiq. Of course they're not going to say that, it'll be some excuse about his lukewarm European politics...

I've formed a positive opinion of Parham's character by the way he's conducted himself over the years. And Solid Queue isn't a serious Sidekiq replacement for the types of high volume applications where you'd want a Sidekiq license; I doubt he even sees it as a threat.

Do a Google search for Sidekiq DHH. First link is about migrating from Sidekiq to Solid Queue. Third result (for me anyway) is a Reddit thread where Perham talks about trying to make Basecamp a customer and that he wasn't able to...

It's Perham.

Just to echo those sentiments, Mike Perham has appeared on a panel discussion recently with his 'competitors', including Solid Queue.

https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/panel-the-past-present-and-...

He strikes me as egotistical.

Also the fact that DHH complained about not wanting to live in London because of how many non-whites there are, praising violent far-right agitators, and repeating debunked racist claims.

Source? That’s hard for me to believe.

"As I remember London": https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

I can see how you'd read it that way, but I read it like this, "I went to Lisbon and it was basically a bunch of California programmer bros. The culture there has been lost, and that loss is regrettable."

In other words, it can be read more charitably as a lamentation about the loss / changing of a culture.

Nah, it's pretty clearly dog-whistling for racists. Talking about 'native Brits' vs 'mass immigration' changing the 'culture and makeup'? People don't say 'makeup' to refer to California programmer bro culture, they are talking about racial makeup.

Then he goes on about 'Pakistani rape gangs' and 'abuse of British girls'–oh look, the classic trope of the nasty browns and blacks preying on our precious white children.

Then take this: 'There's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.'

These words would not be out of place in 1066 Britain ie 'this is a country of the Saxons, not the Normans'. Britain has seen this exact brand of xenophobia for millennia, in fact they even had periods of bigotry against Danes! If dhh had gone to London at the wrong point in history, he might have experienced racial prejudice.

Interesting, right?

> Then he goes on about 'Pakistani rape gangs' and 'abuse of British girls'–oh look, the classic trope of the nasty browns and blacks preying on our precious white children.

It might just sound like something off TV Tropes to you, but even the Labor government's own inquiry [1] on the matter shows that hundreds if not thousands of children were actually molested by such gangs. It even has a chapter on "Denial", which brings your comment to another light:

> Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue. This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities.

For your reading:

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/685559d05225e...

> Nah, it's pretty clearly dog-whistling

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

He used to, but is now stepping into politics, in a conservative / reactionary way.

See: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

> That was then. Now, I wouldn't dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits.

I couldn't understand this bit. Why does a Dane care about the ethnic makeup of London ? Is London worse off than the 90s and early 2000s ? He doesn't leave much to charitable interpretation…

That post is just plain racism.

But why does a Dane care about the ethnic makeup of London ?

Same reason I might care about the ethnic makeup of Japan. I like some aspects of Japanese culture and I would hate to see it disappear due to cultural homogenization.

I don't want to guess too wildly, but I suspect you also support the rights of indigenous peoples to practice their culture in the former British colonies like Canada or Australia? Why is the idea of wiping out British culture in 2025 OK, but the historical destruction of indigenous cultures - as in Canada's residential schools - treated as a grave injustice similar to genocide?

I don't think you should care about the ethnic makeup of Japan.

Why in the world do you think you are in a position to decide what is good?

What is this non-sequitur? White people in Britain still have the right to practice their culture as they see fit. You can eat all the beans on toast you want, even if your neighbor is eating curry.

From the same article.

> Recently, a projection that Danes would be a minority in their own country by 2096 caused an enormous stir in Denmark.

I can totally understand this point btw. What I don't understand is

> London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits.

Can you tell me how has London changed for the worse from '90s and early 2000s to today for a Dane to lose interest in it ?

> I don't want to guess too wildly.

Please don't. I am a brown dude from a Third World country. I do follow DHH's blog.

All cultures evolve. Most of them disappear. They leave influencew behind as they meld. Any modern culture will be recorded very precisely.

You can't tell if someone is "native British" by looking at them. There's records of non-white British citizens with voting rights back to 1749. Are those people's great-great * whatever grandchildren not British if every generation has lived in Britain because you don't think they "look British"?

Britain is not and never has been a single ethnic state. It's very hard to not consider someone a racist who thinks so.

Tommy Robinson, as supported in this post, was a member of the BNP. The BNP, until 1997, had a policy of forcibly removing all non-white people (including citizens) from the UK. After 1997 (and when Robinson was a member) they moved to a policy of "financially encouraging" non-white people to leave the UK.

If you are a member of a party who believes in treating citizens differently based on the colour of their skin: you are a racist.

If you think you can identify British citizenship based on the colour of a person's skin: you are a racist.

I don't really like throwing the "racist" word around but this is literally as simple as the definition gets.

The hubris on display in this article is wild, even for DHH. As a Brit, he's got no idea what he's on about. The bit about "the boats" is just a complete misunderstanding of the facts.

If one is not from a country, has no family from that country, and has never lived there - one shouldn't have much of an opinion about what's going on there. To then assume those opinions could be even remotely correct is an arrogance of an astounding proportion.

I wish. Have you read his blog???

I skimmed it and he seems to disagree with some $popular_2025_opinions. I guess that means it's time to run him out of town on a rail.

It might be time for you to refresh your idea of "popular opinions". What was unpopular 10 years ago is very much popular and mainstream today - which is probably why he felt safe enough coming out politically. He didn't have the balls to do it years ago when it would be, hm, uncomfortable.

> I guess that means it's time to run him out of town on a rail.

Why run him out of the town? When he does not like non-native Brits in London, as Dane, he will probably leave.