David Heinemeier Hansson (edit name/settings)

David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm 37signals.

In 1999 Hansson founded and built a Danish online gaming news website and community called Daily Rush, which he ran until 2001.

In 2005 he was recognized by Google and O'Reilly with the Hacker of the Year award for his creation of Ruby on Rails. After graduating from the Copenhagen Business School and receiving his bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Business Administration, he moved from Denmark to Chicago, Illinois, U.S. in November 2005.

Hansson co-wrote Agile Web Development with Rails, a book on the topic, with Dave Thomas in 2005 as part of The Facets of Ruby Series.

Hansson appeared on the cover of the July 2006 issue of Linux Journal which included an interview with him in the feature story 'Opinions on Opinionated Software'. The same month the now defunct Business 2.0 web magazine ranked him 34th among '50 people who matter now'.<3>


Personality
Hansson is known for the crude and brutal way he expresses his opinions, both online and in real life. One of the main criticisms of Hansson has been about his and his company's arrogance.<4><5><6><7>

Hansson, however considers these criticism unfounded even if in fact he openly acknowledges and embraces the arrogant claim made for him.<8>

Another facet of Hansson's personality has been his dislike of enterprise software and particularly Java.<9> He reportedly picked Ruby, which was a fringe programming language at the time, to develop a web-development framework and created Ruby on Rails, which has very contrasting approaches to the way web-development in Java works, as an act of protest. <10>

Hansson has expressed the view that women's low participation is not a result of what he called the "testosterone-powered alpha nature" of the programming world.<11> The debate stemmed from a presentation made by a speaker at GoGaRuCo (the Golden Gate Ruby Conference) that included sexually suggestive slides. Hansson has received criticism for his endorsement of behavior seen as radical and crude.<12>


See also
Instiki
Ruby on Rails
37signals
Agile Web Development with Rails

References
↑ David Heinemeier Hansson, ed (October 2001). "Turning Another Year (Loud Thinking)". http://www.loudthinking.com/archives/00000056.html. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
↑ 37signals weblog
↑ Business 2.0, ed (July 2006). "50 People who matter". http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/peoplewhomatter/index.html. Retrieved July 10, 2007.
↑ Donald Norman. "Why is 37signals so arrogant?". http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/why_is_37signals_so_1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "Yes, they are arrogant -- and proud of it(...)But the disdain they show for their customers is not just arrogance: it is selfishness. The solution is not ignorance of the needs of your customers. Their approach is both arrogant and selfish."
↑ Tim Bray (2006-04-13). "JRuby performance benchmark". http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/04/13/RoR. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "David Heinemeier Hansson is rude and arrogant. At least that’s what he claimed in his keynote, displaying the dictionary definition of “arrogant” and saying “Well, yes”; then the next slide said “Fuck You”. We’ll see;"
↑ "The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid". wired.com. 2008-02-25. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_signals?currentPage=all. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "Critics had been saying that Rails wasn't versatile enough, that it couldn't handle large amounts of traffic, and that Hansson himself was arrogant. "Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult," Hansson said. "But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one's own importance or abilities' — I thought, sure."
↑ Tim Bray (2006-04-13). "JRuby performance benchmark". http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/04/13/RoR. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "David Heinemeier Hansson is rude and arrogant. At least that’s what he claimed in his keynote, displaying the dictionary definition of “arrogant” and saying “Well, yes”; then the next slide said “Fuck You”. We’ll see;"
↑ "The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid". wired.com. 2008-02-25. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_signals?currentPage=all. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "Critics had been saying that Rails wasn't versatile enough, that it couldn't handle large amounts of traffic, and that Hansson himself was arrogant. "Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult," Hansson said. "But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one's own importance or abilities' — I thought, sure."
↑ "Let Java retire from the spotlight of web applications in dignity". indicthreads.com. 2006-04-13. http://www.indicthreads.com/1422/let-java-retire-from-the-spotlight-of-web-applications-in-dignity/. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "Just as Fox should have let The X-Files end with dignity around season 7, so should programmers let Java retire from the spotlight of web applications in dignity"
↑ "Rails creator on Java and other 'junk'". infoworld.com. 2007-08-31. http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/rails-creator-java-and-other-junk-017. Retrieved 2009-05-06. "JRuby is a great way to open the conversation with enterprises by saying, You don't have to throw out all this "junk" you've accumulated over the years, Ruby is just an incremental piece you can put in. (...). The majority of Ruby on Rails users out there are people who go straight to Ruby on Rails, they don't have junk in the trunk."
↑ David Heinemeier Hansson (2009-04-27). "Alpha male programmers aren't keeping women out". http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-programmers-arent-keeping-women-out. Retrieved 2009-09-03. "I just can't get into the argument that women are being kept out of programming because the male programmer is such a testosterone-powered alpha specimen of our species"
↑ "Projects on the Move". Linux Magazine. August 2009. http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/105/094-095_projects.pdf. Retrieved 2009-09-03. "Rails developer David Heinemeier Hansson posted to Twitter, “I’d much rather we went with beautiful women for the filler stock art. Works in ads.” Heinemeier Hansson doesn’t seem to understand that very few people are likely to feel comfortable in a community where they are only expected to play the role of human advertising material. The insensitivity that Ruby VIPs demonstrate in the face of numerous, anonymous comments online helps illustrate one of the major reasons for the marginal participation of women at open source community events."