Web developer Josh W. Comeau reports that his latest course, Whimsical Animations, is selling at roughly one-third the rate of a typical launch, with overall revenue down more than 50% compared to last year.
- Comeau identifies two primary drivers for this decline: uncertainty about the future of developer jobs and the availability of LLMs as personalized tutors.
- He notes that fewer people are engaging with paid content because they can obtain similar instruction from AI tools.
- Other course creators report similar trends, citing a lack of consent or compensation when their work is ingested by these models.
Comeau suggests that the combination of job market anxiety and accessible AI tutoring is significantly reducing the incentive for developers to purchase educational materials.