TheStandup - DHH Talks Omarchy

0:00 All right, hey DHH. Thank you for go ahead TJ. Are we recording? Oh, yeah, of course good I just want to make sure because I don't want to be intro intro ever for this Sorry to set the stage welcome to the stand-up if you haven't been paying attention to the YouTube TJ and I just got done doing a 7-day 24-7 stream live where we used O-Marky for the first time together which was absolutely fantastic by the way and so it's even more fantastic that we have DHH Creator of O-Marky here with us to talk about it And so we have a lot of fun things we do want to discuss including Sins of DHH is what we're calling them which is some of your shortcuts that you have Chosen for O-Marky as the defaults I'm not gonna say I'm offended, but I'm gonna just say they're the sins of DHH, but

0:52 Welcome to the stand-up. Thank you very much for O-Marky and I must say it was awesome using it during those seven days. It was absolutely fantastic That's awesome to hear and then I mean I think the first bug report I can send in here is that the pronunciation What happened to the R? Where did the R go in that?

1:13 Swallowed as a proper dang Okay, okay, I'm very getting Danish right now. So that's like a joke. She will definitely get because Danish has a lot of those swallow gutter old sounds. So umachi. That's what it is. All right. Oh Machi Okay, that's good. Okay, you know you get to decide how it said, but just remember no one will listen to me And they'll still call it That's the thing is that the creator of GIF calls a GIF exactly and no one listens to that right?

1:41 So that's kind of the running joke. So apparently DHH wasn't right about everything That's actually pretty good All right, so let's kind of let's let's go back a little bit in time because I think a lot of people may not be familiar What or what O-Marky is or O-Machi. Sorry. What O-Machi is what what motivated it all that so why don't you kind of give us maybe like when Adam At eve what happened how did this kind of come together and what was the motivation behind it?

2:11 Sure, so the story actually starts back in the Apple Garden of Eden and I've been a Mac person for 22 years is that about right? 2001 is when I switched when OS X was 10.1 or 10.2 if I forget if it was still better or not, but it was very early on and I got really excited about the Mac because I really wanted to get out of windows and here was an alternative. It was built-in Unix underpinnings and off we go So I just stayed basically in that wall garden for 22 years and I was using Linux on the server through the whole time Very happy with that, but also I had absolutely no intentions Motivations of pull towards running Linux on the desktop and then over those 22 years I mean I changed Apple Chains then eventually my relationship with Apple also changed quite dramatically

3:05 when the company just started being not someone I wanted to send all my money to and When that kind of happened originally with the launch of hay.com when all the nonsense about the App Store and then trying to bullies into Paying 30% of our revenues to them when that all kicked off. Do you know what's funny?

3:25 That even wasn't enough to yank me out of the garden I was still like well This is madness and I fought them and we had this big blow up and then get music a Mac It really wasn't the trigger it should have been in hindsight that should have been like okay That's enough no more and then I still bought like freaking three After that right but then I reached the point when they had their whole blow up about PWA So remember if you remember that but they had this skirmish with the European Union and they built this quite nice Implementation of PWA into Safari and I just built a new product on that With campfire that we didn't have to find PWA. So everybody PWA for campfire, which was really nice and was using all the tech and everything and I felt like holy shit

4:13 Are they gonna rock pull me one more time within literally two years enough? So at that moment, I just decided you know, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore So the first stop was actually going back to Windows for a hot second There's a blog post still live me saying I'm doing it I'm switching to lend to Windows and part of that came because WSL 2 Has gotten really good like you can actually legitimately run Linux on Windows So all my Ruby development and so on could it happen there and the VS code integration is okay and I thought I Don't really like it, but like I can do it But then what happened was I bought a framework laptop literally this one This is the ship of thesis that I still have here the original switching to Windows laptop

5:04 I bought the framework with Windows pre-installed and I ran and was like, oh, yeah, do you know what? I like the I like the laptop a lot, but I wish it was a little quicker. I was doing all this Testing and whatever and then for whatever reason I forget what it was. I load it up Ubuntu on it and It ran faster like same hardware everything the same and I was getting better scores It's crazy what not having AI in your operating system will do It's crazy like Or not yes directly in the toolbar will do for your like experience developers Are you tired of code reviews that just say looks good to me or here's seven things?

5:41 I need you to change that are irrelevant to the PR will meet code rabbit AI reviews right inside your editor starting with VS code cursor and Windsor. Sorry. No Vim yet hit review and bam Outcomes feedback even before you open a pull request code rabbit can help flag bugs that your vibe coding with your LLM bots missed and with One easy click it can send all the context back to your favorite agentic tools for quick fixes lined by line code rabbit Offers a generous free tier with up to 50 code reviews per day grab the extension now at code rabbit dot links slash primogen Dash VS code links in the description and ship cleaner code today Do you know what funny aside on that that has been the dominating theme for a lot of people who've been trying

6:26 Omochi lately that most people they don't rush out and buy a brand new computer They find like some old laptop like a 2014 or 2012 or even 2009 and they put a mochi on it And they go like why is this so fast? It felt like this machine basically was garbage It was running some version of windows or or even a version of mac and then apple abandoned that platform Uh, and then they put a mochi on it and the machine just feels fresh. It feels new. It feels fast So most of that's just Linux is so efficient. It's so much easier on the hardware But for me just to that experience of going like same hardware and like the web runs quicker That's really interesting So I started giving a book to a try and this was about like 18 months ago and

7:17 Yeah, do you know what at first I was like I don't love how this looks it feels like I want to be kind here But a cheap copy of something else. It did not feel like it had its own identity It did not feel like it was made by someone what the same aesthetic sensibilities as I did or even the same aesthetic sensibilities That someone working at Apple and I thought like all right, whatever I can make do and I made do and I started tweaking and then I tweeted a lot more and then I tweeted even more Eventually lomo cube popped out Which was my kind of remix of Ubuntu and I ran that for about a year and then this summer Literally doing the 24th of the mall when I had some downtime during that week. I started looking into hyperlid

8:03 That was the first thing that sucked me into that and then I realized Oh, I can't run hyperlid on Ubuntu. I get it's not a thing that runs on top of that. What do they want? Oh, they want arch Arch I mean, I'd I don't you joke about arch Oh, it's not a regain your virginity. You just got to run arch Like that sounds nerdy in ways that I'm not ready for and I'm already kind of nerdy But it turned out I was just wrong As often happens with technology you have a preconceived notion of what it is and then you actually give it a try yourself And you realize oh, that's not at all what I thought it was so starting in like June I just went crazy down the rabbit hole of figuring out everything there was to know about arch about hyperlid the whole ecosystem of

8:53 tooling and putting it all together and I thought this is exactly the kind of stuff I would have thought I would hate to do Until I realized oh shit. This is exactly like Ruby and Rails. This is exactly like 2003. I'm discovering this gem ha ha of a programming language or an operating system It's totally unfinished, incomplete in terms of what I need to do my work and how I want to enjoy a computer but I can see That these are the underpinnings that'll take me from the bare nothing you get with arch to The promised land you can get with a fully configured hyperlid and set up and I thought it you know what if I just finish this work once I'm gonna have the perfect computer like is it worth for me to invest

9:48 Two weeks or this was what I thought at the time. Oh, it's just gonna be two weeks. Just two weeks Here we are three months later, right? But In two weeks, I thought I can make something that's probably gonna be a lot nicer than anything I've used before at least That was the thesis and I started doing it and I realized very quickly. Yes hyperlid Titan window managers is actually how I want to use a computer. Yes I watched other people using tyling window managers. I mean i3 and dwm and all these other ones have been around for a long time But for whatever reason either I was ready or hyperlid was just a lot better. It all just clicked Let me count it for a quick second on this So a big thing I think makes hyperlid really special and I do want to give a shout out to the creator

10:32 Is that when you get i3 you're used to this idea of a desktop environment And i3 is like oh you know like no you don't get that anymore And so it's like if you want to make it look good It's actually a significant effort whereas hyperlid is like oh people like things to look good It's just gonna be built in. It's gonna be super simple like it's not gonna be this like super complex Experience and so I'd say even back in the arch pre hyperlid was actually a much more like not as pleasant of an experience Because all tyling window managers weren't nearly as you know pleasant hyperlid is a true Like piece of art when it comes to operating systems, but someone throw that out there big appreciation moment

11:13 Yeah, which by the way, this was one of the first things I did when we started getting going with this and I realized we're gonna be quite serious about it I had first personally. I started just helping Fun backstory. I mean is this student in Poland working on this basically just all by himself and he created something This amazing like in I don't even know if he lives in a dorm room or wherever he lives But he does not live at one infinity loop corpertino and he does not have three trillion dollars Worth of resources to command Thousands of people to do stuff for him and yet he One person has been able to come up with a more appealing operating system than the one I used for 22 years That's crazy, and I mean crazy in the most beautiful

12:05 internet Stranger kind of way And I thought that was a big part of the appeal too that here's something that as you say Doesn't just work right but looks amazing looks better the animations are smoother They're a better time the busier curves or more as they should be easier And then I think that's just that's incredible right? So I thought once I once that clicked for me That oh, I didn't have a problem with telling window managers. He said a problem with the ugly ones As you say I had a problem with having to it's a dwm where you literally have to recompile it if you want to change it I think that is There's not that's a bunch of unnecessary ugliness and unnecessary Compersomeness and here's hyperland that out of the box for what it does out of the box

12:54 Which by the way, I mean let's be fair here. It's not all of it. It's a it's a slice It's the silent window management, but it looks great out of the box and Everything is basically said. I'm gonna thought I can really work with this and then I discovered a few other things Oh a waybar I can do all this configuration and I Installed all the other tools hyper idle and this that and the other bit and in those two weeks I then had a system where I thought I wouldn't go back like even if Apple came tomorrow and said sorry dude Our bad here's the most amazing m7 computer. You could just have it. I'd go like thank you, but um You brought me to a better place Number stay I am at peace with the fact that we had some beef and you said me on this journey

13:38 And I ended up in a destination that I should probably have been in five 10 years ago I don't know But now I'm here and I can't appreciate it more And I want to do exactly what I did with Ruby. I want everyone else to While out of everyone else I want developers at the very least to realize this exists And you should give it a try because if you do you might have the same experience I did and now tens of thousands of others That holy shit. I want to run Linux Like What I had literally no intention of ever doing that Um, not because I didn't appreciate everything that's been built I mean as I said I run Linux on the server for a billion years not because I didn't Prefer the underlying philosophy and the open sourcedness. I all of those things

14:29 I just didn't think that that was Something that was compatible with my aesthetic aspirations and how I wanted things to just work And all the other stuff. I was just wrong at the best possible way of being wrong When you have misconceptions about something that's free Free and you can just take it put it together and then you get something incredible like this and That almost brings us up to speed because you know what This is three months ago. I just started this thing Literally three months ago. I is that right math here. Uh July 1st. I think it's went to Yomachi first released dropped um So yeah three months and uh and change And here we are now Literally 10,000 people have used it. There's an enormously

15:17 Engaged community which was by the way something that was interesting I mean I sort of did the same thing with um a coop just at a very small scale It was a remix of Ubuntu a few other people showed up to help and a few thousand people used it But with hyperland and with arch as the underpinnings We're at four levels lower in the stack which means we can fix almost everything Nothing is set in stone and we don't like something we throw it out and put something else in it You can't do that with a Ubuntu right like it's very high up into stack You can change some colors and you can install some tweaks and so on Arch like ground zero right like like the thinnest possible layer on top of raw Linux

15:58 Which means that all of these hundreds of people who are piled into the community and contributed patches and so forth They could just they could just fix things they could just do things and we could set it up exactly how we all wanted it And I think that's the other part that's really capturing that unique Linux spirit Like I'm not trying to sell anyone with a matchy on you're never gonna have a problem Everything is just gonna be perfectly easy you can just drop in from macOS you don't have to learn anything I think that was a huge Mistake as least as I see it when it comes to talking to developers that We were just selling it on philosophy. We were just selling it on like oh, it's sort of like a slightly

16:42 Worse version of mac or slightly worse version of windows, but it's free as in speech Okay, I mean that's great and then no one gives a fuck right like they just want a better system They just want something that works and a lot of people right now They just want something that has a long lasting battery which we can talk about later. It's a the most amusing Final stand that apple has for everyone I talked to is like how school does the battery whom you shit apples been reduced to a battery company That's what you do now make your do or sell you're the little bunny that goes like a little longer in the commercial than the competing battery Jesus Christ waterfall anyway Just if we get to this place where

17:26 We have a system you can change everything you can make everything better and then You can iterate on it and I can cut a new release and a week later You've made a change to an operating system that then distributed to tens of thousands of people like For a lot of people again if your hardcore Linux nerd and you're already running on like latest Get versions of everything like this is new to you But a lot of people that I talked to normally they're used to commercial operating systems They're used to Mac. They're used to windows. It's not how works Like you're not gonna send your little patch to apple and say like a liquid glass Could you make it a little less liquid like that's not a thing that's gonna happen

18:09 Like you don't have access to the source code. You don't have access to anything and what there's just gonna tell you just like Shut up. It's perfect, right? We know best we know best We know best but you by the way, I mean, that's ironic because I'm totally the same way in a sense That I know best for the Install version that you're gonna get umachi actually for a hot second had a bare mode where you could install it without all my other programs That I went to install and we ran that for a little bit until I decided like that was stupid Umah in the umachi name literally stands for omakase Literally stands for chef's choice literally stands for I decide what's on the menu for starters Right, but what's so beautiful about open source in the same way it was with ruby and rails

18:55 Which is also super opinionated about everything and it comes with all these configuration points already set Was that you could take that and then go like I'll give it a minute and then I'm gonna want to change five things And then you just can it's your computer you can literally change anything you want rip out any decisions I've made put your own in there and we can still be friends What isn't that great and then it's wonderful to see that actor in practice right like all these people have installed Amachi and then I look at their desktop and like I can squint and I can still see my vision in it, but I also see their vision And I think that's just a uniquely wonderful beautiful part of running linux on the desktop

19:38 We used to that a lot of web developers so used to that with our frameworks with our tooling You can set a patch to react or patch to rails and it might make it into the next release And I gave you some satisfaction But the satisfaction you get from Changing the tools you're directly touching and seeing and the how the windows move around that exists on a different level of Pleasure I'd say You know one thing Okay, well, I was just wondering you know since you said that this all started in the garden of You know apple and stuff and if you've ever thought about this logo dhh If you ever thought about this that this is a piece of fruit with a bite out of it It's I had not designed Oh Yeah, I want to hear a follow up funny

20:30 And it's yeah, go ahead Brian Followed up funny even though this what the Steve Wozniak determined the first price of the apple one Which they sold for $666 he liked repeating numbers, but just like All art is but nature unknown to the like it's very funny the you know the accidental symbolism That all just runs into each other even when unintentional because Steve Wozniak was Hardenly not trying to do something. He just loves repeating numbers And that was the one that fit into the budget the best Yeah, I I do like when sort of the metaphors all line up. I do like when You can tell a nice story where the things fits and the characters line up I would absolutely use that bite of the apple thing

21:13 It's just funny all right. Yeah, we're so what we're trying to say is apples literally Satan no Nothing But and we love was but there's something super important what you said, which is just Which is I've experienced it. I've felt it. I understand the feeling which is the uh The problem of choice and when you first start like say something like Vim there's so many ways to navigate There's so much you have to go through it just feels so overwhelming because it's not even just that you have to choose You have to like actively engage in this like just this weird struggle with yourself to use something completely different And the same thing with switching from say Mac which you you do nothing and you just press buttons and things appear

21:56 And you just use a mouse and that's it and you're like oh, this is fantastic You don't have the problem of choice and you're actually seeing this happen more and more It's happening uh if you use almost any major streaming thing now You'll see it's something that's just like think for me and they'll just show you something I'm also convinced this is why shorts are super popular because shorts you decide when you don't want to watch You don't decide what to watch. So you're just like oh, I like that. Oh, I don't like that Oh, I like this and so it's like this constant feed and so oh marchi taking or omokchi taking the stance of We're gonna give you something that you can just use and then you can progressively

22:29 Make that choice wider and wider. I think it's something that's gonna be really like it's a very powerful Like amplifier that will get many many more people using something and it just makes me very excited And I want to make sure though that we stain the tension that the on ramp is as low as possible Zero effort to give it a try But not zero effort to stay because what I don't like about shorts and a lot of other media and tooling and computers that you never have to think you never have to engage with it You never have to learn anything you never have to get better I actually think is a complete dead end. They got the first part right It should be so frictionless to try to see if this is something for you because why should you invest

23:15 Endless hours customizing you set up and doing all the stuff if you don't even like it in the end That's a complete waste of time and that's what kept me away from Linux for a long time away from even NeoVim for some time I could see something there that I thought this is really cool But if it requires me 40 hours to even just set up a base config I'm sorry that's a next year project and next year becomes next year and it becomes never Yeah, I want an opportunity to try this out and see if it's something for me And then I'll know whether it's worth the investment. So this is quite To the core of the philosophy of design. I'm trying to imbue umachi with So easy to get started. We will be not just the easiest but the damn fastest

24:05 Linux distribution you've ever installed that gives you an entire system I mean you guys have teach I think it was your run that has the record record world record for a match installed one minute 46 seconds Like think about that for a second How many times have you spent like tens of minutes just doing a minor upgrade of Mago as or in took case leave an Hours installing windows and getting the updates and being stuck in that loop and then we install an entire system That is way more featureful way more full stacky for developer in a minute and 46 seconds Like that's crazy In fact if you told me at the start of mochi that we could get to that You could get to an install a month minute 46. I'd say no way like there's stuff

24:54 Then it realized what stuff how fast can you copy umachi the ISO is six gigabytes How long does it take to copy six gigabytes like that should actually be our floor for how quickly you can install on something Um, it's a few seconds. Okay. We can't do it in a few seconds But then it's unreasonable to think that even we need 10 minutes Like on a very fast modern computer. We should be able to do it I originally thought if we can just get to like five to seven minutes that'd be amazing And we kept discovering that the reasons things were slow were stupid There were absolutely no reason that this stuff had to be slow You could set up especially arch in such a way that it was just lightning quick to install

25:37 Which directly serves that purpose of getting someone to try something with absolute minimal effort yet still being on the road to real There's a bunch of people vast for like live CD stuff where you sort of kind of tried but it kind of sucks Because running up the USB and I'm like um That's not what I want to spend my time on I want to spend my time on you watch a video You watch the people and you go like I want to give this a real shot on maybe an old laptop Maybe a new one. I don't care But it's for real and you can actually use it and then you'll be up at running in An unrealistically short amount of time a surprising weight. What is it done?

26:15 amount of time and then you'll give it a try And if you don't like it you've wasted what five minutes Okay, I mean you fucking waste five minutes scrolling on tiktok 20 times a day or whatever you scroll on whatever doom scrolling is your pleasure, right? And if it actually Picture interest you can now spend Another two hours or five minutes and start using it and over the next year You can plow in as many hours as you want you can keep learning keep getting better But I'm not gonna keep it so simple that if you need to actually do anything or change anything You don't have to learn anything. I want you to learn this stuff This is why I'm actually it's actually kind of hardcore if you go to edit any of the config files

26:57 I just dump you into Neo bin like yeah, sorry dude swimmer sink like WQ you know what you're not you'll find out and I think that's um That's that needs to be part of it. Do much experience is not just that it's easy and then it's flat No, no, we're going to fucking Mount Everest dude pack your backpacks The first little straw is gonna be completely flat terrain and the birds are gonna be singing But if you want to learn you gotta have some incline and you gotta keep going Yeah, I was cracking up because I was tweeting at you while we were installing like cursu DHH I was planning on getting so much stuff done in between installs here And I kept on having to move down the line to like install so the next one

27:43 I mean right here. I'm pretty sure this is the computer that I got the world record on So I just wanted to you know shout out framework. We got some cool tiles here too. So anyways, that's uh, that's the one So I also think this is this is funny by the way. I mean this framework thing is actually part of this moment Yeah, I mean I've been pushing framework ever since I switched to Linux But I think the framework desktop. I have one over there in the corner as well and it's got a little much Uh, tiles on it too. There's just something perfect about things coming together at the same time And this is what I found with hyperland is also relatively new if I tried this five years ago There wouldn't have been a five hyperland there wouldn't have been I think uh, I've actually started on a three years ago maybe

28:24 Framework wouldn't exist in this form. There wouldn't be this competitive AMD alternative to the m chips So all of these bits are coming together and also we wouldn't have had the blessing that is macOS 26 We would have at Tahoe. We would have had uh Microsoft stopping windows 10 We would have had all these gifts. They're like hey, are you guys running marketing for Linux right now like what's going on This is a little fishy spending sleeper agents in the Microsoft Everything such that Linux looks so much better in comparison But I've also found this is why it's so magic that you could be right But at the wrong time and then nothing changes like there's been people who've been right about Linux for a very long time

29:09 Right like they've been We need to bail the year of Linux under desktops and what is it 99 is that when that meme started? It's a long long time Suddenly the moment meets reality the moment meets the talent the moment meets the momentum And now we got hyperland we got framework computers. We got great AMD chips We got arch we got all of it and I go like Now let's go so I put all this work in get it out there and The response has just been crazy. I mean, I'm sure you guys see that I have not seen this level of novel excitement from people who don't just like oh, it's kind of nice But are just head over heels and love with the new system that they found since Evangelizing Ruby back in the mid 2000s. It feels like that kind of moment

30:04 All right, I got to jump in and we got to circle back a little bit here I want to talk first about the the the ease curve to where it goes like you don't have to learn anything Into oh, you have to learn everything right like there's there's you you are along that path when you start down this road Uh, I really I think this is one of the most important things because I remember this being drilled into me over and over and over again During my time of open source ad Netflix and during internal tool development Which is always make every tool so someone doesn't have to learn something and I found that the interfaces would get more And it more abstract the point where when you had to do something due to the fact that the north star was never learned something

30:46 Doing something became progressively harder because it's because there was always this idea that you should never Have to learn and it's just like this thing that just makes me bonkers with kind of modern direction of web development Which is don't learn you don't need to learn here. We're gonna make the most perfect thing for you Just don't learn just use what we have it's perfect 100% of the time It's gonna change every year, but we're gonna it's gonna be perfect because we have a perfect now Right, so it's just like this it's just like this weird mentality and I don't blame anyone from falling into it because learning is It's time it takes effort It can feel very daunting sometimes when you think something's complicated

31:20 It feels complicated to look underneath the covers and realize oh, it's actually Oh, it's just a bunch of if statements and for loops. Oh, okay. It's actually not that complicated It's pretty simple and so I just I wanted to call that out I know we're way past that time because I just feel so strong about that philosophy of Of don't ever want to learn make everything the pit of success because it just makes everything awful Like if you would have done that with oh oh mochi I don't think I would have liked it because I couldn't take control because it had been like so wall-gardened off I would have hated it. I would have just disliked that experience greatly And so I'm just very happy that that is the mentality because that is just

31:55 It just kills me on the inside that that that isn't it and I see it all the time in chat too people always say things like Oh, like Neil van's too complicated to protect editor like oh, we just saw one just someone just said that just recently It's the kind of the same mentality which I totally understand again big investment upfront But I would argue it's it's by far less complicated than VS code like I don't know what you mean by that like it's it it But it's just because it's it's it's it's opt-in is for customization It's opt-in is not for you using their interface and so that's like this experience of you need to sharpen your own acts as TJ likes to say yeah I spent a lot of time sharpening the axe before you go to the tree and some you know some pieces of software require a lot more sharpening

32:35 But when you get it to that point it feels really great, right? It is really great to use and so I just I just love that experience So I just had to get that out there just absolutely love it. I just can't even stand that it's not the the fault of everybody's kind of like position And I think this is actually key to why Linux Has been succeeded in its primary mission on the desktop for a long time because it was trying to copy exactly what you're saying That theme set from macOS and set from windows that this need to be able to be instantly usable by everyone Regardless of skill level and interest in learning and I'm like no When it comes to developers or I'd like to say anyone who just likes computers

33:18 That's where I've tried to distinguish that much is not just for developers It's for people who legitimately like computers now that's a minority of people who use computers I'll tell you that most people don't like computers They begrudgingly accept that they have to use them to get things done They're surprising number of developers Don't even like their computers which blows my mind you have picked the wrong career buddy if you don't even like computers But if you like computers you should like to use them well You should like to want to use them well and umachi from the get-go Just I have some of these lines here where you know you have to learn some key bindings Like the mouse is not going to really help you all that much unless you learn that

34:06 Um super space starts the app launcher um Super alt space starts to match you menu Super return starts a new terminal super B starts a browser super a start your AI like there's just a handful of super X Yeah, you forgot super X For X and Yeah, I'll call everything out super M from my music and super O for Obsidian and like there's a bunch of tools that You have to get that into your fingers and it's gonna take a little while and while you're waiting to load that in It's gonna be a little frustrating And this is exactly actually inspired by me learning NeoVim because Part of the hardship I had getting out of the Mac was actually not even the Mac integration all the stuff It was text mate and editor I'd been using since 2006 and I really love that I still love

35:01 And obviously it does just run on anything else it just runs on the Mac So I had to find something else and first I tried my hand with VS code which is inspired by text mates in some ways And similar in other ways but ultimately for me unfulfilling And it was actually uh you guys and stuff and a few other youtubers who got me into do you know what maybe I could learn NeoVim maybe I could learn vim again Maybe I should give this another go and then realizing that the first two days totally sucked Because I felt like Not just a beginner but like a child who can't particularly basic words right like I want to say something But the words aren't there like me me me me boogie and there's like what do you want do you want poetry?

35:46 No, I fuck one strawberries You idiot why won't you just give me this strawberries just because I don't know the word And I felt like that in the event for a little while for a couple of days It's like I want to do the thing but I don't know how to do the thing and now I'm gonna look it up and Ah now I just delete it five lines Jesus That's real That is very real but if you make it through to the other side and you level up you go like holy shit I am doing things now with my hotkey combos that I could never Do in VS code or I could never do even a text man. I love text mate So the investment two days of pain a week of real intense learning and then what another 20 years of payoff What an amazing investment. Can I find more investments like that where it diverts for like a couple of days

36:35 And then maybe it's annoying for a week and then it's incredible For the next decade that is a kind of investment that should just be a no brainer for anyone who likes computers and want to get better at them another framing for this is A professional computer right like there's something about pro in a way where it doesn't just mean fucking I don't know Aluminum railings on your phone or some stupid shit like that that pro in the literal sense of it Here's a tool made for people whose career depend on it like those can actually require learning because it's worth making the investment Because this is how you make your money. This is how you enjoy your hobby So we can make this investment and it's gonna be worth it and

37:21 The mental image I had in my mind for a long time was old travel agents. I or even Flight check in attendance. I don't know if you've seen some of those who work those terminals that are like those terminals So still okay, right? Yeah, and you just hear the keys. You can just hear like all the hot keys and they're jumping back and forth and you go Yeah, okay, your flight is now booked to Atlanta and You're like here's someone who really needed to learn to be fast and proficient at that task and learn all these bindings Or you see the same thing with someone working the numpad if they're in Excel wizard and you just look at that skill It's like some of those videos where they throw up the coconut and like he just chops it like four times and like

38:07 It's all look whoa that skill. Why don't we want that as a developer as someone who likes computers Don't you want that kind of skill like an excel the shark doing the numpad or a check-in agent just Tapping away or someone cutting a coconut real cool like you should want that you should not want like Oh, can I use the same Lithoric way of using a computer that's literally a monkey could figure out Did that no? No, no, no Yeah, the analogy to that I like using is that like my software development career is a marathon guys Like it's not a sprint. Yes So like getting something done Over this weekend versus the like hopefully you know 20 to 30 40 years that I'm still hopefully going to be writing code or whatever

38:54 That looks like in 30 years. I don't know, but still whatever the like I still I It actually matters to invest in figuring out how to do those things Which doesn't mean you have to pick me of him, you know what I mean, but like Figure out your tool that actually works and like understand it because you want to do that And then the other thing that I also talk about in that sort of marathon mindset is like If you're liking programming You're going to want to learn it more Like go ahead and trick your brain into doing the thing that you like So then it's like oh, I'm looking forward to sitting down at my computer and smashing the keys and doing something instead of Oh, it's Monday and I have to write code again your career is gonna not be as good

39:37 Perspective is a huge thing Like it is one of the most I mean I still remember dying on the cliff of I just want to do real work Which was always something else right which was always some other task and then I was always Encumbered by like my tasks at my job and instead at some point I just I just remember being like I could just make this fun instead Like I can figure out the best way to do this thing and just like dork out on this Even if I don't like even if my love for the actual task isn't there dude I got the me and sam mom and love of the game is there though and so it's just like Dude, I gotta just do it for that reason. I got to do over the love of the game and just changes everything when you're just like

40:12 Oh, this could be fun like even TJ and I the game we're making making the little enemy icons for where they pop out It's just as like genuinely like when you really think about it's just a boring task Do a little bit of math do a little bit offset paint a couple things right here Put some enemies in call it a day or you can be like how can I make this the greatest experience?

40:27 You could possibly have for this one little thing what makes this awesome How can I program this so that it's awesome and easy to maintain so that other people can come and extend it or do something with it that actually is meaningful Like instead of just being so like oh gotta do one more thing one more thing like make it good because it's fun It's actually fun have fun with it And do you know what the most fun is to be competent the most fun is to be good The most fun is to have learned a bunch of stuff so to look back upon how silly You were a year ago in your ignorance in your lack of skill and now you've stepped up the mountain You got higher towards the peak and the top and this is actually one of the reasons

41:09 Why I'm so focused on aesthetics as well because Not all programming tasks as you say even in stuff that I'm making for us and I'm excited about the general vision like not all of it is going to be just Super exciting the problem itself But if I'm working in a cool environment that looks great and I can get satisfaction out of applying my competence In ways where the coach just looks super nice and is very nicely structured And I picked just to write words for my objects and boom now. I'm just switching my umachi theme to Osaka jade because it's nighttime and it's all green and I just go like I love how this computer looks Yes, I want to use it more as you say teach. I want to sit down and hammer those keys

41:54 It's one of the reasons why the mechanical keyboard has done such wonders for me as well Another thing I just slept on for all these years when I heard nerds talk about their mechanical keyboards Like I got a magic keyboard. Thank you very much. It literally has magic in the name guys Yeah, exactly. I'm magic in the name. I'm just better going to be and then I was like I tried a couple of mechanical keyboards And I didn't love him. I was like see Apple was right and then I tried the right mechanical keyboards and I went Like are you telling me that not only can my operating system look amazing?

42:27 I can literally listen to thaki heaven while typing What kind of like is this a job like I should be paying for this privilege I shouldn't get me getting paid for this. This is amazing And I think setting yourself up in such a way where literally like just making keystrokes It's a pleasurable experience because you get the little thawk and you get the nice touches and all the stuff And then you're looking to Or it's a beautiful vista of what the computer is like and you got just the right things and you got all you little key bindings You could take on a lot of tasks that would otherwise in a more mundane environment feel quite dull And it'll be enjoyable and then you just get through like more of the time

43:10 I'm having fun in front of my computer solving problems learning new things getting better Yeah, this this just made me think of like The obvious parallel of this is like Hey, would you rather work in an office with fluorescent lights overhead and like a really uncomfortable chair and like Your neighbors yelling randomly about something annoying or would you rather have like a nice office with pleasant light like everyone's like Yes, of course. I want the nice version I will work better and I will have a better time and I will be more productive otherwise like Why is Google spending a trillion dollars on their headquarters, right?

43:50 They clearly think the with the place you work Effect the way that you work, right? So then oh, but as soon as we put it on a screen That's for children, you know or something And there's a lot of Linux thinking that's like that. Yeah, my opinion unfortunately so And I have the greatest respect for people who don't give a shit about this stuff that we've been talking about and you just want like I was watching this Infamous YouTube video. Maybe we talked about it last time with the guy is writing at the vice driver in Linux for For something for some old machine. There's not even since it's highlighting, right?

44:26 Like he's I don't think he's even using bimmy's using VI or something And you just sit like he's working there and he's like I don't even see any of that stuff I don't even care. I'm like holy shit. That's kind of amazing and I respect the hell out of that And also that is not me at all and I could not work like that I don't want to work like that. I want my fonts to look super crisp. I want some Nice colors. I want all the stuff. I wanted to look nice That's what I need and massive respect to the old guard of Linux folks who didn't need any of those things The beauty of the moment now is that we can coexist and make just everything better for everyone We get all this core Linux stuff from a bunch of people who

45:07 Not only couldn't give two fucks about aesthetics or actively hostile towards the even idea The things should look good Which I find Interesting But then you also have the new guard people like backstreet who just shows up with hyperland and it just looks incredible And it looks buttery smooth right like all the animations adjusted the right curves and Full 60 FPS and you just go like holy shit. I can get I have my cake and eat it too I can literally get access to 30 whatever four years of Linux goodness and now it can also look amazing And feel amazing and sound amazing That's amazing and it's all free and I get to change it whenever I want and there's all these community of people who care about the things and just the same way that I care about things

45:56 man So so there is some fun things about that you know you mentioned the person with no syntax highlighting You may not realize this but 1982 was like the first Like software syntax highlighting there were some basic ones and a couple editors beforehand But it didn't really even come on to the scene until the 80s, you know Like we based desktops were also not you know like they they're just recent memory There are people that you interact with every day that were alive and working before Those things were even available right so it's like you know I'm not that old and it's within my lifetime. I was only born a couple years after syntax highlighting And so it's like that's not that's actually kind of mind blowing that that you know this exists

46:38 And so even the aesthetics of this and how it's going is so relatively new so many people don't realize like even something as simple as auto complete Was rarely available unless if you were in visual studio code visual studio express or not even visual studio code That wasn't thing visual studios are prize to you. Yeah, enterprise or express you could get expressed and it worked with C Which was pretty awesome right like there's a couple things you could actually get it to work on or X and I studios to see sharp express And netbeens and that's because Java Java to pretty extensive version of all then like that's There was a couple other but that was about it You couldn't use it any language you couldn't just get it for free all the time

47:15 And so it's like so much of our life has only recently in the last just little bit of time kind of started to come together where This is available more broadly And so it's just like we're only at the very beginning of all this stuff of things looking really nice and actually knowing what nice even looks like But I think that you're gonna see a lot of people not maybe not valuing it I mean me personally. I'm not a huge value were of the nice things as much as I am of the distraction free things I like the editor that is full screen. No, I don't want to see anything on there I just wanted to very very simple and I type I want to see very few pop-ups if any I don't want a lot of hints I just want to keep it you know clean and streamline and there's this like aesthetic beauty to nothingness

47:51 Because it helps me do the thing right there's a there's a weird there's a weird world but twix the two that that exists But I also love the look of umachi when you like loaded up it just looks and feels good I like the screen saver so I'm like oh man I'm like stuck between two worlds of I wanted all and I want nothing at the exact same time You know stuck you enjoying just that golden middle road when I got started with Ruby and red rails I was like do you know what I love the hacker culture of PHP just get something working immediate gratification Amazing, but I don't want to live in spaghetti code land and then I also really enjoy Java the rigor and the patterns and whatever But I also don't want to spend four days setting up my XML config file

48:36 Is there a golden middle path? Of course there is can we take the best from PHP and the best from Java and get something in the middle That is both quick and rigorous The same is true here. Can we take sort of the minimalism the beauty of no distractions in Linux land and just make it look nice with great fonts And great colors and things that don't dance around it's funny because The distraction free and the calmness of that we've gotten a lot of pull requests for changing the way bar And people want to stick all sorts of things in they want to Sticking like which job track is playing and it should be rotating or maybe they should even have like the equalizer bars And then they want to see the weather and I'm like yeah, we're not doing any of that

49:16 I don't want any movement at all in my way bar. I want once a minute One number gets to change that's it That's what I want to see the clock at the top is the only thing that's allowed to change because I love by the way your clock Can I just throw that out there you did not put the year on there which I am so thankful for that is like That drives me bonkers that clocks have like the full extended year. You like I don't need that man Just give me the simple stuff Dude, I spent like two days sweating what the clock and the dates should look like on that and lining it up Just right and trying it full length and short length and the other side and this side and like just really nerding out about the individual

49:54 Precision some really glad that you appreciate that Most people don't see it most people see like I want more and do you know what what so funny is that I think Umachi is mainlining rising culture into a more general audience and there's a folks in rising Land who just love like everything is dancing right like everything is playing everything is swooping up and down And I go like I love the creative creativity of that But I'm also building like a pro desktop and that sounds kind of snotty. It really is not meant to be I'm creating the computer platform. I want to work on all day long. I want to be surrounded by beautiful Calm things right beautiful shapes beautiful colors crisp font all of that stuff

50:41 Not like everything's gonna bounce around and not the white foos and not the anime characters all the other stuff that Ricing cultures also kind of very fond of and I think this totally fine if you're 19 like smash all the Japanese anime girls all over your dish of peace be with you That doesn't really work for me. I that's not what I want it. Can you give me just a piece Serene sunset like that's a default backdrop. What's that one repo that you have for anime waifu backgrounds anime Just know you don't have a whole repo for it because I know how much chat loves them That sounds like the secret action your hard drive. You're hiding for your mom Oh Moms don't get it thought out of me. Don't worry

51:29 But that reminds me though too of what you're saying like if I went to a mechanics off it like a mechanic shop Right and they just have like a million lights playing and like a smoke machine and all this stuff. I might be like I feel like this is not the professional setting. I need to solve my car issues, right?

51:45 So it's it's nothing against smoke shows or like laser light exhibits But I think I want my mechanic to be like straight forward. He can fix my problems I feel the same thing about my work computer, right? Like So there is something here where it doesn't have to be gray. It doesn't have to be tall It doesn't have to be corporate right but it can be calm and beautiful and aesthetically pleasing And also the place where I do work. I just one of the things I got some shit for it was umachi when you use the ISO Does not give you the option not to have full disk encryption like that She's not a negotiable thing for me because it's irresponsible for you to install a work operating system Especially on a laptop with company data on it if there's no full disk encryption

52:30 So that's just not a relevant domain for me. I'm making this for professionals You can do whatever you want you could always just install arch first not install full disk encryption Then install a matchy great. That's a side quest for you And then for me the straight highway line of getting Umachi out to your computer involves full disk encryption because this is for work I think I saw it's all that without though because ed hacked your computer while we were there. Didn't you prom?

52:55 Yeah, I mean, well, no it was it was someone else's computer Yes, but there was something that went on there Uh, but I did I did want to throw this in there Which is the uh just going back to kind of like the dancing and the hyper like rising and all that I am not on I am not quite on that side I don't really enjoy that stuff, but I love the idea of how can you make a complicated thing Into something super simple that you can get the same information out of and so like tea I like a good example is when tg and I were working on the tower defense We had this really complicated menu and we worked many days to turn it into something that's like small And very easy to understand and that's small easy change now it just feels 10 times better because you're like I get the same information for

53:35 One-tenth the cost. How do I do that constantly? And that's kind of like that. That's That's my version of rising is like how do I get maximum information with absolutely no cost to it I think apple for a long time was the best at this like this is why I think they got so successful as they did all these things and made you feel good using them The other thing too that I think Where you know people doing rising don't get enough credit is like Sometimes when you push the system really hard in a direction it like opens up easier pathways to like Oh We want to be able to make dancing waifu show up in the way bar So it needs to be able to refresh at crazy speeds and then all the sudden Oh, well, I just want kind of like a little equalizer to show up right and then it's like oh well

54:19 That's simple. We already did dancing 4k anime waifu's you just want the equalizer that simple and like I had this experience with um Like the reason I started telescope for neovim I was not trying to make a fuzzy finder that people would use I was literally just looking for a real-world project to test lua integration So I was just trying to push Wait, where does lua integration fall short what features do we need to work on what are we prioritizing what what can we make a Full-featured lua plugin that does like a million things inside of neovim and what is it missing to make lua feel truly built in Innative because it was not at the time it was still vim script for so much stuff right and like it happened to be useful

55:02 But like that was effectively like and you know people were all like We already have fcf Like why are you rising neovim for nothing and I'm like I'm just trying to figure out what we need to do in neovim Core to fix a bunch of problems and so sometimes I think Like they don't get enough credit for pushing the system hard and like different verticals And then it makes it really easy to figure out how to do What you know whatever you need for a matchy, you know that kind of thing which I think is Yeah, they should get a little more credit for that. It's a huge credit I think the Exploration that has gone on in the rising world is what sort of the vanguard of what allows us to all do all this stuff now

55:41 hyperland Turn into I think it's is the most popular Place to implement these ricings that is on our unix porn and these other places that collect the ricings And I always look at that and go like oh This is too much. I literally say that almost every time this is too much But here's a kernel of something that is incredible. I'm gonna borrow that I'm gonna put that into sort of a slightly calmer version. You've explored the terrain You showed me all the things that are possible. I only want five percent of it But if you hadn't turned on the light in that room. I wouldn't have gotten any of it. Yeah, so Incredibly grateful that this is happening and not just for well what I get out of it for the operating system

56:25 I want to run but making computers fun and personal and quirky like that is a huge win and accomplishment in and of itself. I think this is one of the things I've Both liked and really disliked about the Apple years that we just sat around and waited for Apple to give us something And Apple was really good. It's giving us nice things But how many people work at Apple in their design department?

56:51 I mean, it's a handful of people how many people work on the internet and have crazy ideas in their bedroom about Either anime waifus or something else and then want to see it happen in the world and accidentally discover something incredible A lot more a lot more and if we sort of harness all of that exploration and go like all right This is all the things that are not possible. I'm gonna take the best of it. I'm gonna compress the complexity of it I'm gonna compress the information density as you say I'm gonna boil it down to just the best of the best of the best of all of that You're gonna just end up with something so pure and so incredible that We can all benefit from and then we can benefit from without

57:35 Having to spend 150 hours on our amazing unique hyperland rising and those things can co-exist Which is also what I love that now Matches here and anyone can get a beautiful amazing system in literally two minutes That's how long it takes to install it and then hyperland is still here with all the bells and whistles and knobs that you can turn on and you can Transform your operating system into something that looked like a 1996 Adventure game on the amiga. I think that was the guy who won the latest the hyperland Rising contest. He literally turned it into what looked like an amiga game from like 96 and I'm like I didn't know computers could still look like this and you're telling me like that a modern operating system can be turned into this

58:22 I love it I don't want to run it every day, but I love it. I love that sense of creativity for the hell of it What is the guy getting out of it personal gratification and satisfaction and admiration from his peers That is the most pure and pristine motivation you'll find out there And we should applaud it with both hands and we had none of it none of it during the apple years All we could do was sit around and say like oh it's a time for wdc again Then let's clap at all those people and what they put out and again It's not that there's something bad about it. It was just that it was such a Mediated way of using your computer like now we can really get into theology here, but there's some parallels between Catholicism and Protestantism about like do you get to read your own Bible or do you have to get the

59:16 Word of the Lord handed to you by some priest in a in a funny hat, and that's the only way you can get that connection, right I I'm more on the direct connection part of it. I'm more of the direct connection to my operating system and being able to interact with that Glory, so we should call you the Pope of Omatchi is what you're saying He's no He wants a bit He wants to make out of Omatchi okay Church door That's pretty good. That is actually really really good. That would be the technically the night. I'm actually that's the 99 feces There's got to be an ashloot actually The high church actually is pretty crazy Well, this has been fantastic. I know you have a tight deadline, so I think you're right around the time you have to head off right

1:00:13 Yeah, I haven't had dinner yet, and I'm starting to starve. That's important. Yeah Oh, let's make sure that you can get that dinner DHH Thank you so much for joining us and just talking about omatchi I know you want to come back on again here soon. Maybe we can do something on Just ruby and all the stuff that's going on because I think a lot of people are confused at All the things and I did want to end with we've been playing around with AI generated music and taking your articles and making bangers out of them And I have listened to your it takes 10 years article Maybe 100 times and just you talking about this again this whole omatchi thing all or or mochi thing comes down to this idea that

1:00:49 You put a bean counter at the very very top someone who's not quite You know dedicated to the product, but it's good at hitting numbers and it's just like now look at you You're upset you're angry and took 10 years for it to kind of slowly fall apart And it's just like you it's starting to happen for a lot of people now Where this idea that people who aren't in charge are the people who are also living and breathing that you know that product And that's why one person a singular child from Poland who's probably not even like 24 years old can out perform A huge swath of people Because they just relied on something completely different you can just see you can feel it one has it one's in it for the love of the game

1:01:26 You know And I think what's true about this moment right now is that we have this collective realization That apple is no longer what it was like in 12 2012 or 2015 even that it's a different kind of company And it's rare again that this pendulum swings for everyone like sort of at the same time And this one has been so remarkable for me to see that in many ways apple still makes some really nice stuff They have really nice laptops that have long batteries and battery life Right, I love that battery company. It's my favorite one They're really nice battery company now That makes nice aluminum enclosures for their very nice battery tech and We can sort of look at that and go like you know what I want something more like I'm not gonna pick my computer

1:02:15 Just on the basis of who has the best door cell lasting batteries right and that we are all coming and all right Like I'm in an echo chamber everyone is an echo chamber But so many people are coming to that realization at the same time That's there's something there's something in the area. I could sniff it right and this is why the joke that This is the year of Linux on the desktop It's both funny because we've been saying it for all these years But I also actually legitimately think it's true. It's I mean it's true It is gonna fucking happen 2026 we're not gonna look at whatever 2% 5% market share within Dissegment of people really like computers within developers. I think this is gonna happen gradually and then very suddenly

1:03:01 Awesome, well, let's see where can people find some information about you DHH DHH.dk. That's my personal side has links to everything and then umachi.org has the link to the ISO the link to the manual the link to my video All right, and then uh, there's a website that's like something like Omacon or something coming in 2026. What's that all about?

1:03:25 What is that all about? Yeah, I um I want to make a small conference for Umachi for this whole idea of omacasa software for this whole new Wave of Linux with vibes as the tagline says right this marriage of everything that we've been talking about for the last hour So that now is the moment now the aesthetics now the functionality now hyperland now arch now neo vim It's all coming together and we should celebrate that and we should celebrate it in person because both the people who involved and all that should meet up and just uh, I want to give uh Backstreet high five and I want to give you high five and I want to see People who are building this future and then I also want to have fun with people who are excited about it. So

1:04:12 next year I'm pretty sure we have a venue and I'm pretty sure we have a city And I'm pretty sure you guys are going to figure out how to make some spectacular YouTube videos out of it And I think it's going to be a lot of fun Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you very much THH for coming on Thank you very much for watching the standup every Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific time Uh, and of course 11 a.m. The Lord's time. That's my time Uh, and there we go. That's it. Thank you very much What in the song Play the song the 10-year song Yeah, oh my gosh, it's the best you can end it with just back Once the CEO Seed is given to someone without an engineering It's been a story of going and telling now

1:04:58 Apple legendary American companies that all got lost when a pink Marketing man or logistics Hand to cover Bowings trouble started when they were taking over by McDonald Douglas in 1997 But really accelerated after 2005 when they installed their first CEO With no aerospace background the result after 10 years of cost cut and outsourcing Was the 737 Maxim C's tragedies and an organization Got it of ambition and engineering pride