https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla_software "when not customized from their original form, meaning that they are used without any customizations or updates applied to them"

I was actually being serious. I've never seen anyone refer to a customized RoR, have you?

There are thousands of gems out there which either offer some functionality not in Rails, or replacing/extending some that is (typical example being rspec). Vanilla means no (too many) gems on top of Rails.

Some large companies have customized rails, and since Hey is built by the company behind rails, I assume DHH meant to imply that they are not using something special that everyone else won’t get access to.

ah, didn't know that. appreciate the response

I imagine the above was a joke

Do you know what "RoR" stands for?

Yes, Ruby on Rails, the name of a web framework for Ruby.

Just because there is Ruby in the name of the framework doesn’t mean the language itself doesn’t deserve a mention.

The generally accepted thing to do is say LANG/FRAMEWORK, like “Python/Django”. I don’t think DHH’s choosing to include the name of the Lang (an interesting choice in and of itself tbh) in the name of the framework he made changes that.