AI engineering is web development all over again.
The same cycle that made web dev the path into tech is repeating with AI. But the tools are better, the learning curve is different, and the ceiling is way higher.
Think back to 2015. 2016. 2017. Every bootcamp was teaching web development. Every YouTube channel was "learn React in 30 days." Every job board was FLOODED with front end roles. HTML, CSS, JavaScript. That was THE path. That was how you broke into tech.
Now look around. It's 2026. Every bootcamp is pivoting to AI. Every YouTube channel is "build an AI agent." Every job posting wants AI experience. Every brand deal I get now? AI. Every conversation in tech, whether it's engineering, product, marketing, even HR? AI.
I built a 156,000 subscriber YouTube channel teaching web development. And I'm sitting here watching the exact same cycle repeat itself. But it's different this time. Let me explain why.
The Cycle Is Repeating but It's Not the Same
Back in the web dev era, the path was clear. Learn HTML. Learn CSS. Learn JavaScript. Build websites. Get a job. Bootcamps sold you that dream. "Learn to code, get a six figure salary in six months." And honestly? It worked for a lot of people. It worked for ME.
But computer science degrees and coding bootcamps aren't as worth it as they used to be. And I say that carefully because you still NEED to learn the fundamentals. You need to understand how code works. But AI can do those fundamentals in one minute. The stuff that used to take weeks to learn? AI does it instantly.
So yes the cycle is technically repeating. Everyone's talking about AI the same way everyone was talking about web dev back then. But here's the difference. Web dev didn't replace the need to learn web dev. You still had to grind through the code yourself. AI actually changes HOW you learn. You don't need tutorials the same way. You don't need Stack Overflow. You don't need bootcamps like before.
Now it's about how do you prompt correctly. How do you make sure your code actually works. How do you make sure AI isn't making mistakes. Because AI WILL make mistakes. I told AI to give my friends unlimited access to my study app. No rate limiting. And it hard coded that directly into the code. Just right in there. So yeah. You still need to know what you're looking at. The game changed but the fundamentals of UNDERSTANDING code didn't go away. They just look different now.
I Stopped Making Web Dev Content
I'm going to be honest. There's a reason I stopped making web development videos for like six to twelve months. I thought my job was going to get replaced. I was genuinely worried. And I didn't want to push people to get a job in tech when I wasn't even sure WE would have jobs in a couple years.
But while I was waiting to see where tech was going, I started using AI. A LOT. More than the average person. I prefer coding with AI over gaming now. World of Warcraft just came out with a new expansion, Midnight, and I chose coding over that. If you know me you know that says a LOT.
And what I noticed is that I was going through all these struggles with AI that I knew other people were feeling too. So instead of making "how to center a div" tutorials, I started sharing my actual experience. How AI is changing everything for developers. And my audience responded. My highest performing video isn't a React tutorial. It's about an identity crisis. That tells you everything about where we are.
Nobody Knows What an AI Engineer Actually Is
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit. Nobody actually knows what an AI engineer IS. Web developer? Clear. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, build websites. AI engineer? It's the wild west right now.
It's honestly like developer relations which is what I do for work. Nobody really knows what DevRel is. Everyone just makes it up. And I feel like they're doing the EXACT same thing with AI engineer. But that's actually a GOOD thing.
Because it means the barrier to entry isn't "pass a LeetCode interview." It's not "have a CS degree from Stanford." It's can you BUILD things? That's it. Can you actually ship something?
Look at my path. Six months ago I built my first AI app. Super basic. All it did was transcribe speech to text in any text input on the web. Then I built a journal app. Then a study app. Then I built my own three layer AI memory architecture system with vector embeddings, fact validation, auto categorization, superseding logic. It got COMPLICATED. But I got there because I started simple and kept building.
You should probably know Python. Know TypeScript. But it's not about passing algorithmic interviews anymore. If companies are still doing that for AI roles that's a problem. This field is moving way too fast for that. The people getting hired are the people who are BUILDING. Period.
The New Vocabulary Is Terrifying and That's Okay
Web development was the great equalizer. No degree needed. Self taught friendly. YouTube and free resources everywhere. That's how I got in. That's how a LOT of you reading this got in.
But AI engineering? The words alone are terrifying. Embeddings. Vector databases. Transformer architecture. Fine tuning. RAG. Graph RAG. Hybrid full text search. If you don't already know this stuff it feels like you're locked out. It feels gatekept.
That's actually one of the reasons I built my AI study app. There were SO many things I didn't fully understand. What even IS a vector database and why is it different from a graph database? Why does vector search matter? What's the difference between a 3072 dimension embedding and a 512? What's full text search versus hybrid search? I had ten years in tech and I STILL needed to go deeper on all of this.
So I built an app that teaches me. Quizzes me. Talks to me and makes sure I actually remember this stuff. Because if you don't know how to speak AI you will not get the job. That's just the reality. Every conversation in tech is AI now. If you can't keep up with the vocabulary you're going to get left behind in interviews, meetings, everything.
But you don't need to know everything on day one. I didn't. I learned it by building. And that's the path.
The Money Is Shifting and It's Real
Every brand deal I get now is AI. Every single one. And they pay significantly more. The money in AI content, AI roles, AI everything? It's real. It's not hype.
The roles I'm looking at for my next position will more than likely pay 300 to 500 thousand dollars a year. And that's not delusional. That's what AI roles are paying right now for people with the right experience.
I love it because I would be TERRIFIED if I wasn't keeping up with AI. But I'm not just keeping up. I'm staying ahead by building complicated apps. By learning the deepest technical details of AI architecture, RAG, graph RAG, vector search, multimodal LLMs. Knowing when to use Haiku for quick LLM calls versus Opus for complicated reasoning versus Sonnet when you need something good enough but not as deep. Learning that GPT 4o mini hallucinates like crazy so you stay away from it for sensitive data. These details MATTER. They're what separate someone who uses AI from someone who ENGINEERS with AI.
What About the People Still Grinding Web Dev?
I know some of you reading this are still learning React. Still grinding CSS. Still trying to break into web dev. Should you keep going?
Yes. Keep building. But use AI to do it. Use Claude Code. Use Codex. Use whatever you can afford. If you can't afford any of those use Kimi 2.5. Open source. Hundred percent free. Use ANYTHING with AI to build. That is what the top engineers in the world are doing.
NVIDIA is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to use AI coding tools across all their engineering. Amazon AWS had to have a meeting because junior engineers were using Claude Code to push code straight to production and it was shutting down services. They had to have an ACTUAL meeting about this. If NVIDIA and AWS engineers are using it why aren't you?
Web dev isn't dying. People still use Next.js. React isn't going anywhere. But web development isn't the HOT thing anymore. It's not the thing that gets you ahead. AI engineering is. And you can do both. You can be a web developer who builds AI applications. That's literally what I am.
This Is Not Blockchain
I know what some of you are thinking. "Isn't this just another hype cycle? Like blockchain? Like Web3?" A lot of people got burned chasing those trends.
But no. This is different. Tesla is using AI. NVIDIA is building everything around AI. Palantir. SoFi. The Department of Defense was fighting to get access to Claude's models for their systems. The actual GOVERNMENT is having arguments over which AI to use. If the government is fighting over this how much more real does it need to get?
Blockchain was speculation. AI is infrastructure. It's already in everything. It's not going anywhere.
So What Now
AI engineering is the new web development. The same way web dev was the path to break into tech ten years ago, AI is the path now. The cycle is repeating. But the tools are better, the learning curve is different, and the ceiling is WAY higher.
I was a front end developer for years. The last six years I've been in DevRel. I wasn't pushing to production like I used to. But six months ago I started building deep technical AI apps again. And I caught up. Not because I'm a genius. Because I BUILD. Because I use AI to build everything and because of that I have to understand how everything works. The databases. The embeddings. The architecture. The trade offs.
Don't be lazy. Don't make excuses. The shift to AI engineering is real. The money is real. The opportunity is real. And it's not gatekept if you're willing to build your way in.
So build. That's it. Just build.
