Founder of Boot.dev here: the industry is absolutely having a VERY rough time in 2026. Our revenue in particular is actually up in 2026 vs 2025, but modestly low double digit percent) vs 2025 being nearly double 2024. That said, I feel we're an exception in that we have been able to grow, mostly due to a complete doubling down on high quality human content, and trying to build experiences you just can't get from plain text (interactivity, animations, etc). time will tell.

But isn't this (interactivity, animations) exactly the kind of stuff someone already familiar with a concept would turn to AI for yet another interactive visualization that might help develop intuition?

That's at least what I do. Sometimes it feels performative at best, other time I get genuinely new ideas by having a vague thought turn into a tweak able viz.

I tried creating a similar concept at https://www.codembark.com but felt it would be too hard to monetize with the headwinds of AI. I ended up just getting rid of all of the paywalls and just offering it for free.

Thanks for boot.dev, it's the one website I regularly point my students to when they ask about places for supplemental programming education. I hope the genAI bubble doesn't put you out of business like it might do for us in traditional academia.