The death of web development education

Baldur Bjarnason, a former author, publisher, consultant, developer, educator, radio and TV producer, laments that various roles he held throughout his career were not sustainable in the long run. He also notes that the web development community often alienates people who don't fit into their narrow definitions of "technical" or "creative" roles.

Generative AI has had a significant impact on web development education, causing Bjarnason's training and education projects to drop off one by one. Many of his peers have also shut down their businesses, and the demand for web development ebooks has plummeted. Software developers are now relying on error-prone, backwards-facing, non-deterministic chatbots for what is now considered web development education.

Axel Rauschmayer, a prolific writer on JavaScript and TypeScript, has seen his income from book sales drop to zero, as the traffic to his free online books and blog has increased but provided no ad revenue. He is now taking his blog and books offline to decide his next steps. Salma Alam-Naylor, who formerly worked in Developer Relations, has experienced burnout and anxiety due to the constant pressure to justify her role's existence.

She claims that AI is killing developer education, as developers are now mindlessly scrolling for short-form content dopamine instead of gathering to learn and share projects. The future for educators in this volatile industry appears bleak, with authentic human collaboration being replaced by conversations with chatbots. Rich curriculums crafted for real human audiences are now being stolen and regurgitated by predictive algorithms.

Josh W. Comeau, a course creator, web technologies expert, and creator of online courses, articles, and interactive tutorials, reports a 50% drop in revenue due to GenAI. Fewer people engage with his content, and many are switching to LLMs that use their work without consent or compensation. Comeau argues that there's no incentive for people to create high-quality free content when AI tools can easily replicate it.

Kyle Cook, a YouTube content creator from Web Dev Simplified, has seen a 50% drop in views on his programming tutorials, leading to a halving of his income. He believes that programming content creation is no longer sustainable for a full-time job, and individuals are now turning to AI-generated content, which makes more money and garners more views.

Rachel Andrew, a renowned technical writer and editor, reflects on the impact of GenAI on technical publishing. She notes that AI has broken the relationship between subject matter experts and editors, who must now apply extra scrutiny to ensure accuracy, as AI tools might introduce subtle inaccuracies unnoticed by the original authors.

Andrew questions whether AI actually increases productivity, as non-AI automations are now more accessible due to easier access to API references in machine-readable formats for LLMs.