Made Basecamp and HEY for the underdogs as co-owner and CTO of 37signals. Created Ruby on Rails. Wrote REWORK, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and REMOTE.
The great joy of having built a successful business that employs a broad team of talented people is that I get to fish for exactly the kind of problems that most interest me, most of the time.
Usually, this coincides well with the needs of the business. When we moved out of the cloud, I spent months getting Kamal off the ground, so we didn't have to get mired in the complexity of Kubernetes. Fun problem to solve!
And of course, the origin story of Ruby on Rails is that Basecamp gave birth to it all back in 2003. Because I simply wanted Ruby to work well for the web, and we needed a platform to build the business.
But sometimes it's also a bit further afield. We had our big clash with Apple over the App Store's monopoly abuses back in 2020, but it wasn't until 2024 that I severed our exclusivity with the Mac on the engineering side by moving to Linux, and ultimately building Omarchy.
I don't always get to choose, of course. There are occasionally urgent problems that just need our, and therefore my, full attention as a company, or humdrum issues that I just happen to be best qualified to tackle. But this is increasingly rare because of all those great people we've managed to assemble at 37signals.
And that's how it should be! Building a successful business should yield dividends beyond just the financial ones. It should afford you more opportunity to press your comparative advantage, so you spend most of your time on the projects that stimulate a little Call of the Wild.
Never to the point of being too good for anything, mind you. Taking out the trash is still everyone's job some of the time. But mostly, I want to be sitting by the pond of interesting problems, fishing for the ones that catch my eye and hook my motivation.
The open source movement spent decades fighting for everyone's right to change software, through free access to code and permissive licenses to release improvements. But at the dawn of the AI revolution, as this mission is finally being broadly fulfilled, it's clear that "everyone" never actually meant everyone to some.
See, all programmers are equal, but some programmers are more equal than others. If you're a programmer being assisted by AI, you're not a real programmer. Therefore you aren't entitled to the same supposedly universal open source rights. Or so the self-serving thinking goes in the growing number of anti-agent camps springing up as part of a modern Luddite movement.
Projects big and small have been erectingnewparticipationbarriers on contributions aided by AI to preserve the privileges of the old programmer guilds.
This is a protectionist tale as old as time.
And the justifications are just as tired: It's about quality! It's about attribution! It's about workers! Spare me. It's about you, your insecurities, and your privileges.
Humans have been writing shitty software, with dodgy attribution and plenty of bugs, since five minutes after the profession materialized. Agents aren't perfect, slop is a problem, but giving more people the power to enjoy malleable computers is undoubtedly a huge win for the founding vision of open source.
But as with so many social movements that purport to fight for freedom or equality, this AI backlash reeks of status games, envy, and what Nietzsche called ressentiment: How dare you make or change software without suffering through all that I had to endure learning this trade! This precious power is my reward for enduring the social humiliation of being a nerd!
What should be celebrated as the spread of computing freedoms is instead condemned because it diminishes the exclusivity of those who possessed it first.
Don't succumb to this insular, fearful, protectionist thinking. Programming is evolving. We don't know exactly what the final shape will look like, but giving more people access to the fruits of computing freedoms is worth resisting the temptation to close the gates of participation.
I've been working on Basecamp for half my life, and nearly my entire professional career in software. The first code was written in the summer of 2003 when I was just 23. Now I'm 46, and we've just released the fifth major version.
It's an incredible update to a service that continues to help about a million users a day avoid dropping the ball when working with others. It's AI accessible, but not agent hysteric. It's still famously easy to use, still executes the basics beautifully, and still focuses on the small to medium-sized teams we've been serving in the Fortune 5,000,000 for decades.
Here are just three of my favorite new features in Basecamp 5:
Lexxy editor: Our new text editor finally brings tables, markdown, and live syntax highlighting for code to Basecamp. Oh, and voice notes. It's built on Meta's Lexical editor toolkit, and it's going to ship as the default for Action Text in the next major version of Rails.
Keyboard accessible: After moving to Linux, building Omarchy, and acquiring a taste for mechanical keyboards, I've come to love navigating the computer primarily through hotkeys. So with a lot of effort, Basecamp is now a delight to drive through the keys, and you don't have to be a brainiac to remember them all: just hold down SHIFT, and they're revealed in the interface. SHIFT + S opens the sidebar, ESC moves focus between it and the main page, SHIFT + C starts composing a comment/chat line/answer.
The permanent sidebar: If you live in Basecamp, like I do, it's to stay on top of all the new things that are constantly happening in a busy account, and that's just gotten so much faster with the new permanent sidebar. Before, we had a Hey! menu in the top bar. You'd get a little dot when something was new, then you'd open it, click, and the menu would close. If you had five things that were new, it'd be open-click-close, open-click-close, five times. Being able to zoom through these now with just the return key, tap, tap, tap, and I've read three new things. So good.
And there's so much more. Jason put together a great summary on the new marketing site, which in itself is brand new too. A back-to-basics design in many ways. As our entire industry is getting swept up in agent hysteria (and I love AI as much as anyone!), we thought it better to focus on the human communication that's the cornerstone of Basecamp. The new site just speaks plainly to that mission and shows you the software right at the top.
Another thing that's back is color, specifically in the logo. Basecamp's clever but flat paperclip logo has been replaced with a modern take of our original rolling mountains. In full three dimensions, with depth and a gradient. Love it.
Overall, I'm really proud of what we've built with Basecamp Five. We're inching in on a quarter of a century in service! We still have customers who signed up back in early 2004! This is the kind of legacy that makes me beam, and the new version is just ace.
Do you see the same truth? That's how C.S. Lewis defined the essence of friendship. And that's what we gathered 130 people in New York to honor for Omacon two weeks ago. Seeing the same truth: A love of computers. Bespoke computers. Malleable computers. Our computers.
It's the kind of magic you can only really summon in person. We do our best online, but you instantly realize what an impoverished medium it is for creating real connections once you're all together in the same room.
So that's what we did. We connected. We shared our work, our passion, and our opinions about all these new Linux vibes. It happened in an absolutely gorgeous venue, generously offered for the occasion by Tobi and his event team at Shopify. The space had an almost comedy-club intimacy, with chairs just a few inches from the podium. Thanks to the single-track format, we made the most of that warm atmosphere. I gave the keynote.
I also got to meet Prime, TJ, Bjarne, Spencer, and Vaxry for the first time in person. Which is always a bit odd when you've been working together for a while over the internet. It feels so familiar, but like an unfinished agreement. And then, boom, it's signed with a handshake and a smile.
Same with getting to meet and talk to a ton of other Omarchy users from all walks of life. Many were programmers, but plenty were not. Some came from other Linux distributions, but most from either Windows or Mac. Everyone shared a passion for computers, though. Not just as instruments of action, but as delightful environments for play, learning, and connection.
It all added up to a massive recharge. I built Omarchy for myself, but sharing it makes it mean so much more. Seeing others enthusiastically embrace it as a starting point for their own Linux adventure is a real boost to the motivation needed to keep making it better. Because there's always more to do: more systems to cover with perfect compatibility, more corners to polish.
So that's what we're going to do, together. Make this distro reach more kindred spirits. Entice those who would love a bespoke, kintsugi system, but don't know where to start. It's never going to be for everyone, but that's also why it works as a beacon for those who choose to share the quest.
Open source promised that users would be free to change whatever code they were running. The reality, however, is that hardly any of them ever did — it was simply too hard. Now, with AI, it suddenly isn't.
This is very exciting. Being able to add features to any local open-source application and then use that bespoke fork for your own benefit is an incredible step toward the original open source promise.
This isn't just about regular users, either. Even if you are a programmer, you might not be familiar with the language the application is written in. And even if you are, taking the time to get familiar with any substantial codebase is a tall order. AI is compressing that complexity and making it malleable at a ferocious rate.
What excites me even more, though, is when this power is applied to the operating system, and thus the entire computer. When you're able to change not just individual applications, but your system's menu bars, your window manager, your notification system, your everything.
But you can only do this on Linux. With Windows and macOS, the core elements of the operating system are owned by the companies that make them. While it's often possible to hack certain aspects, it's far from truly having the malleable computer that Linux allows.
I've already seen this a lot in the Omarchy world: users who aren't super technical making the system their own with the help of AI and being utterly delighted by the outcome.
And while this is still a pretty nerdy thing to do, I don't think it will remain contained to that niche for long. As models get even more powerful, the idea that your system is tied down as a fixed black box is likely to become an archaic notion pretty quickly.
As always, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
Intel really delivered with Panther Lake. A 2026 Dell XPS 14 using this chipset with an IPS screen can hit just 1.4 watts of idle power draw on Omarchy. That's good enough for over 47 hours!! And in real-world mixed use on another 74-Wh machine, I've seen around 16 hours of battery life. That's a huge jump over the ~6 hours I was getting over the past two years from AMD-powered Framework laptops.
Technically, Intel already had something close to Panther Lake on efficiency with the Lunar Lake chips from last year, but those were quite slow on any multi-core workloads (like a developer would need). With Panther Lake (358H), I'm getting 17,500 on Geekbench 6, which is about 10% faster than the already excellent AMD HX370, and a match for Apple's M5.
Apple remains ahead on single-core performance, but even there, Panther Lake is on par with an M3. And I don't remember anyone complaining that those were too slow. What everyone has been pining for was better battery life, and now we got it. On a machine with excellent integrated graphics that are good enough to play a ton of triple-A games no less!
But we're getting more than that. The PC makers are getting their act together on all fronts. Haptic touchpads on level with Apple's is now standard on both high-end Dell and Asus laptops. Many of the new machines also have tandem OLED screens that blow even the nice micro-LED options from Apple out of the water. And PCs are now somehow both sleeker and slimmer than the MacBooks.
Jonathan Ive knew this, he was just a bit ahead of the components, and he was willing to sacrifice reliability to get to what wasn't possible back then. But now it is, and the PC makers are taking full advantage.
Now I know that any comparison between Macs and PCs are moot for most people. There's not a lot of cross-shopping going on these days. If you're locked into the Apple walled garden, it's hard to untangle yourself, so most just continue to buy whatever their team offers.
But for the few who are either fed up with Apple in general, macOS Tahoe in particular, or just want to try a whole new way of computing with Omarchy, it's fantastic that battery life is no longer a blocker. It's been the #1 reason cited by folks who've been interested in trying Omarchy, but felt like they couldn't let go of Apple's efficiency advantage. Now that's largely gone.
I also just love a good turnaround story. Intel had been on the ropes for years. Now they have a fantastic integrated GPU that's compatible with all the tens of thousands of PC games on the market, a super-efficient CPU that's a match for an M5 on multi-core and an M3 on single-core performance, and a range of PC makers finally taking the fight directly to Apple on touchpads, build quality, and weight.
These new Panther Lake CPUs are made in Arizona too, btw. With the world as it is, I think any American should breathe a sigh of relief that if things get spicy with Taiwan, there's more to frontier computing than a TSMC plant within a short reach of China. There's still more work to be done on that front (as Intel CPU cores still come from TSMC!), but it's a huge step in the right direction.
Personally, I'm just thrilled that competition is lifting all boats. Apple gave the entire laptop industry a huge wake-up call in 2020 with the introduction of the M chips. Intel's former CEO, Pat Gelsinger, saw the threat clearly, kicked off the 18A plan, but sadly didn't last long enough in the top seat to see his bet pay off with Panther Lake. The rest of us now benefit from his boldness.
I'm also thrilled to see both Dell and Intel leaning into Linux. Omarchy 3.5 ships with every possible tweak to make these Panther Lake chips perform at their best, and that was only possible because Michael Dell assigned a team to work on it. So much love to Mr Dell for letting us borrow the brains and commits from senior engineers within both his company and Intel to ship this big new release.
If you've been waiting on the sidelines for a laptop that can run Omarchy and still get amazing battery life, now is your magic moment. Give the new Dell XPS series, or any of the other laptops shipping with Panther Lake, a try. I think you'll be as impressed as I've been.
