DHH is the creator of rails and you are listening to a very cherry picked take, like all of the internet these days.

His whole argument which I agree with is summed up in a section where he shows a clip of himself 21 years ago saying “look at how much code I’m not writing” and that is the core thesis of rails. And agents provide a better solution than rails with less downside and more upside. So now that the core reason for rails has been overturned, instead of holding onto an old inferior solution to a problem, he has moved on because he is a value driven pragmatist at heart.

He literally built rails to write code as close to English as possible. Expressiveness, get code out of your way so you can focus on solving the non technical problems, stop getting stuck in engineering decisions and focus on business and UX, etc. Now whether his values were truly accomplished some people can argue but what those values are is pretty clear.

DHH created rails for himself and he has been unabashedly firm on his own values, it’s Steve Jobs esque, provides great clarity and focus but pisses people off who deviate from that focus.

Lots of people jumped on rails but don’t share DHH exact values. They see rails as a community ownership not a DHH ownership and they believe in the framework beyond just a tool to solve problems. More specifically they rely on it and helped build it up well beyond “just a tool to write code more like English” to a robust, well maintained usable platform you can build and run sophisticated real world applications with.

DHH has left rails because it no longer is the right solution for his set of values, that’s it. Others in the community rely on Rails to run their systems and will continue to do so until the end of time because let’s face it Rails has been pretty mature since rails 5/6 and despite all the exciting “progress” it’s just a solidly good framework that doesn’t really need to keep up with the trends.