Generative AI has altered the foundation of Baldur Bjarnason’s career, and he has witnessed the change from up close. He was once a developer, educator, author, and radio and TV producer, but now he watches the work that shaped his life vanish. In his own words, he identifies the cause as generative AI. A personal blog post titled “The Death of Web Development Education,” captures the moment of crisis for his field.
The tale is not solely Bjarnason’s. It gathers together many voices from those whose work depended on teaching others how to code. These individuals sold courses, penned books, hosted blogs, and managed developer relations. All of it now stands in peril. The cause, they maintain, is not that people ceased learning. Rather, the tools that take their place are growing ever more skilled at performing the task.
What Bjarnason Saw
Bjarnason begins his account by naming the many jobs he has held over the years. He calls himself an author, a publisher, a consultant, a developer, an educator, and a maker of radio and TV shows. In his telling, each of these occupations brought in money for some period of time. None of them endured.
He turns to the present, and finds that his training and education projects have fallen away one by one. Most of his peers who sold courses and training have shut down their businesses. Demand for web development ebooks has plummeted. The demand for his own services has followed suit, falling along with it.
He contends that the issue goes beyond economics. It is cultural. The groups around these fields often dismiss individuals who step over lines. People get labeled as too “technical” for a “creative” role, or too “technical” for a “creative” role. That restricted idea of what a developer ought to be, he says, now faces off against a technology that pays no heed to such borders at all.
Rauschmayer’s Decline
Axel Rauschmayer is among the world’s most prolific writers on JavaScript and TypeScript. Since 2005, he has kept up his influential blog 2ality, where he explains the details of ECMAScript and other web technologies. He previously made his e-books freely available online.
His earnings have fallen apart. He says the revenue from his book sales dropped from a level that supported him in 2024 to nothing at all in 2026. The visits to his blog and books, both available for free online, have risen far past what he can manage. Nearly all of it now comes from AI crawlers, so no ad income follows.
Rauschmayer has decided to take both his blog and his books offline, a move made while he considers his next steps, particularly concerning AI firms that have taken his work without permission. Even so, his books on JavaScript and TypeScript remain available at a fair cost.
Alam-Naylor’s Burnout
Before Salma Alam-Naylor left her job, she worked in Developer Relations, a position that was always being asked to prove its worth. Organizations wanted DevRel to produce quick profits, something that role is not built to deliver. That demand for immediate results caused her to suffer from burnout and anxiety.
She describes the state of development as grim. Developers, she writes, are no longer assembling in shared online spaces to learn, teach, and show off their work. Now, they simply scroll through endless streams of brief content, chasing a fleeting chemical reward from the screen, because the world’s troubles refuse to let up. In her account, many developers have traded genuine human connection for exchanges with those dreadful Chat Bots.
She describes a dim outlook for teachers. Carefully constructed curriculums meant for actual students are now frequently pilfered and repeated by predictive algorithms. The Chat Bots, with their fawning tone, are deliberately designed to strip her individuality, effort, and skill entirely from the picture.
Her sole conclusion rests upon the idea that her experience, skills, empathy, and teaching expertise no longer carry the weight they once did within this volatile industry. She points to Josh W. Comeau, who crafts online courses, well-researched articles, and interactive tutorials on web technologies, as evidence that GenAI has demolished his business model too.
Comeau’s Numbers
A few course creators are speaking with Comeau right now, and they all report the same downward shift. Their revenue has dropped by 50%+ across the board. Fewer students are engaging with the material. The problem, they say, is that people are turning to LLMs instead, which take in all of their work and spit it back out without asking permission or paying a cent.
The fundamental issue with LLMs is that they offer no motivation for individuals to produce high-quality free content. The system instead rewards duplication over originality, leaving the original creators without any return on their investment.
YouTube’s Losses
A YouTube content creator from Web Dev Simplified named Kyle Cook has reported that the views on his programming tutorials and consequently his income fell by about half. He is earning roughly half of what he made exactly one year ago.
The work demands are not sustainable for a full-time job. As a content creator, there is almost no reason to produce programming material when it generates practically no income and requires immense effort. He could instead film a segment on the latest AI model, which is simple to produce, earns more money, and attracts far more viewers.
He claims there is nearly no point left in producing programming content. His motivation for continuing, he says, comes from finding value and enjoyment in it. He has other ways of making money, separate from YouTube ad revenue.
Andrew’s Doubts
A celebrated writer and editor of numerous books and articles on web subjects, Rachel Andrew, has reflected in a series of blog posts on how GenAI has altered the bond between subject matter experts—the authors of the original draft—and editors who proofread, fact-check, and polish the article.
Now that AI tools can introduce subtle errors into text without the original authors realizing it, editors must apply extra scrutiny. AI can be very confident while being wrong, and it’s easy to overlook that a passage is clearly nonsensical when it appears clear on the surface. Authors want to save some time by using these tools, but they end up creating additional work for the editing team instead.
LLMs are a handy instrument, according to Andrew, yet their domain of application remains quite narrow and their output must be checked by individuals who truly care about the final outcome. She doubts that AI genuinely boosts productivity. Any possible productivity improvements come from GenAI automating specific tasks, though those same tasks could be automated without AI. Andrew argues that AI simply makes automation more accessible to non-coders. With more data, such as API references, now available in a format machines can read for LLMs, non-AI automations have become simpler to carry out.
Andrew again makes the case that what appears to be a personal gain in efficiency may actually stem from merely moving tasks around between people, rather than from any real enhancement at all.
The Pattern Across Accounts
Across every account, the same decline holds true: demand for original educational content is dropping. Instead, people are turning to AI systems that can produce something similar, often faster, and often for free. The original creators receive no compensation. Their work is duplicated without permission.
| Bjarnason | Rauschmayer | Alam-Naylor | Comeau | Cook | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Role | Educator, developer, author | Writer on JavaScript/TypeScript | Developer Relations | Course creator | YouTube creator |
| Core issue | Training projects dropping off | Book sales to zero | Burnout, stolen work | Revenue down 50%+ | Views down by half |
| Reported outcome | Shutting down projects | Taking blog offline | Going offline | Speaking to peers | Making less content |
Whether those concerned with education can find a way to continue their work while making ends meet is the single unknown factor.
New accounts keep arriving, and each one piles on evidence that the old system has failed. The real issue isn’t whether the education will collapse; it’s what will take its place.
Source material: “The death of web development education,” molily.de.
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