I have been a professional programmer since 2004. I have two degrees, both in Electrical Engineering. I worked in the semiconductor industry for over a decade, then pivoted to programming when the semiconductor fabs seemed to all be going overseas (they are now being brought back).
All of which says:
1) you don't need a CS degree to work as a programmer
2) you aren't going to be able to predict the future well enough to know what's happening ten years from now anyway, but...
3) you don't need to, you just need to keep being able to learn new things and adapt
Many people who got physics degrees in the early noughties ended up working in finance. Many people who got engineering degrees ended up working as programmers. If you get a technical degree of some sort, it demonstrates that you can handle technical work, but you shouldn't expect it to turn out to be the "right" major, regardless of which specific one you pick. Things change too fast, and rarely in the predicted way.
We might end up using LLM's a lot in programming, although this sounds a lot like lots of previous hype, both around "AI" and around various other methods of programming without programmers. But I wouldn't advise choosing your major based on your ability to predict whether or not it will pan out, and if so whether or not that will increase or decrease demand for CS majors.
Thanks for your reply. A lot of my concern is because I feel I need to make a decision soon. I'm taking A levels that allow me to easily change to other STEM subjects, but my impression was that a CS degree would limit my options. It's good to know that that isn't the case.
All of which says: 1) you don't need a CS degree to work as a programmer 2) you aren't going to be able to predict the future well enough to know what's happening ten years from now anyway, but... 3) you don't need to, you just need to keep being able to learn new things and adapt
Many people who got physics degrees in the early noughties ended up working in finance. Many people who got engineering degrees ended up working as programmers. If you get a technical degree of some sort, it demonstrates that you can handle technical work, but you shouldn't expect it to turn out to be the "right" major, regardless of which specific one you pick. Things change too fast, and rarely in the predicted way.
We might end up using LLM's a lot in programming, although this sounds a lot like lots of previous hype, both around "AI" and around various other methods of programming without programmers. But I wouldn't advise choosing your major based on your ability to predict whether or not it will pan out, and if so whether or not that will increase or decrease demand for CS majors.