David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

And I'd always been into video games, racing video games.

metropolitan street racer on the dreamcast was one of those games that really sucked me into it was the precursor to project got him which was the precursor to essentially force a horizon i think oh okay i think that's how the lineage goes just a great game i actually just fired it up on an emulator um a few weeks ago and it's

This sort of kind of holds up because it has enough real car dynamics that it smells a little bit like driving a real car.

It's not just like an arcade racer like Sega Rally or something like that.

But I'd always been into that.

Then I got my driver's license at 25.

And moved to the U.S.

And then two years later, a friend that I'd met in Chicago took me to the Chicago Autobahn Country Club, which is this great track about 45 minutes from Chicago.

And I sat in a race car and I drove a race car for the first time.

And I had the same kind of pseudo-religious experience I did as when I started working on Ruby.

Mm-hmm.

Where I did maybe 20 laps in this, basically a Mazda race car from, I think, like the 90s or something.

Like a pretty cheap race car, but a real race car.

Single-seater, manual gearbox, but exposed slick wheels, all the stuff.

And after having had that experience...

First of all, it was just the most amazing thing ever.

Like the physical sensation of driving a race car is really unique.

And I think if you're driving a car fast, you have maybe a 2% taste of it.

the exposure to the elements that you get in a single seat race car, especially one like that, where your head is actually out in the elements, you can see the individual wheels and you sensation of speed is just so much higher is at a completely different level.

Not only can you see the bumps because you're literally looking straight at the wheels, you can feel all the bumps because you're running a slick tire.