[ujal]

I completely agree. Machine Learning is on the way to become a field like Web Development. There is a huge supply/demand gap that will only get wider.

[DoofusOfDeath]

With the caveat that holding a PhD is positively correlated with success in ML, and negatively correlated with success in web dev.

(I'm guessing.)

[edouard-harris]

Having done both with varying success, I definitely agree that your brain needs to be wired differently for each.

In web dev, experimentation is cheap, so you make changes fast and see what happens. In many ML applications, trying stuff is expensive in time and/or money. So the best strategy is often to think hard about what could be going wrong, and make and test explicit hypotheses.

The difference definitely came as a surprise to me when I was making the transition.