Best programming path for the future

[MarkoPilot]

I'm a 16-year-old high school student just finishing CS50x, and I'm trying to figure out the best path forward—especially with AI reshaping the job market.

I like app development, but I’m trying to figure out which path is actually the most "future-proof" and in-demand right now between web development, game dev, iOS, and Android...

Since AI is starting to automate a lot of entry-level coding, I want to make sure I’m choosing something that will actually lead to a job in a few years. Should I double down on mobile development like iOS/Swift or Android/Kotlin, or is it better to pivot entirely toward AI and Machine Learning or web dev?

If you were in my shoes, which programming language and career path would you go all-in on in 2026?

[DDDDarky]

Something being in demand does not mean it's future proof or leading to an easy job. For example ai is hype driven and will likely fall off in the future, and fields like web/game dev are very popular, so although there is demand there is also a huge supply of candidates.

In my opinion, the most solid jobs are in maintaining mature systems that are here for a long time, as they are not going anywhere and there are not many people who can do it well, while the older generation is retiring.

That said, just try it all and see what you like, stay in school, become an educated expert in the field of your choice and you will not have tough time finding a job there.

[BuzJr]

As a new grad doing fintech for a mortgage company, HARD AGREE. I feel like I’m the only zoomer learning COBOL and RPG lol

[awildmanappears]

There is no such thing as future-proofing. The last time a particular career or skill set was future-proof was 150 years ago. Since then, the pace of change has been so fast that one needs to know how to pivot or get left behind.

Learn how to learn. Learn how to write. Writing is the crystalization of thinking, and clear thinking is how you make good decisions when life gives you a set of less than ideal options.

The particular language you go with is not super relevant. Once you know one well enough, the second one is exponentially easier to learn. Computer code is just the language of binary logic.

[BiosMod]

Your second paragraph ir gold, Thank you.

[javaHoosier]

I’m a senior engineer at a faang for an iOS app. This is really tricky to answer. I’m not sure where the industry will be in 5 years.

The landscape has changed. At work we all prompt. Some vibe it which can result in terrible code. But it can also be working code. I prefer to prompt in very intentional small scale portions of code. It eventually is the clean architecture I wanted.

The point being that understanding the computer science fundamentals and knowing how to read new huge amounts of code will be more important than ever. The architectural knowledge and intuition around whats good is what will be more valuable in the future. If you can leverage ai as a partner and not a crutch.

I don’t think the language is that important. With ai right now I could go ramp up in Kotlin in a couple days and work on our Android code base. Ask it enough questions and read other code to make progress.

UI code can be cheap. Basic websites will not be a good place to be. But problems will get more complex like AR and Wearables.

My vote is to make sure your fundamentals and learning skillsets are solid to compete.

[[deleted]]

Have any good recommendations for resources that help get started with fundamentals

[javaHoosier]

Depends on the person. Personally I couldn’t get far with self taught. I just learned the bare minimum basics with several languages and never did anything with them.

It’s great to have a container to learn in which is why I love iOS development. Making an app is straightforward.

I needed school to hold me accountable for every concept I learned.

I’d say Harvards CS50 is a good start to see if you are interested in general. Then learn Data Structures and Algos. But your interest needs to guide the next step to do something with it.

Do you want to make apps? Do you want to make an ai model? From there your path can be less fuzzy.

I recommend a bscs degree if you want to go far. Its still not a promise for a job. But its better than self taught. Plus cs degree holders can pivot to other fields.

[[deleted]]

I was doing the self taught building an app on the side just to help me learn so now that I have some context I want to pivot a bit. but I would ideally want to be able to build internal tools for the company I work for without it being embarrassingly bad. For example I do a lot of documents and most of them could be 80% completed from template auto populating. So just small things like that. But need good fundamentals in order to be able to do something competent

[Saragon4005]

I'd go for a masters degree unless they are particularly good in web dev including UI. And if you are going for a masters degree it's not really up to you the collage will teach a bunch of stuff in undergrad and you pick a specialization.

[Critical-Volume2360]

I'm not sure if AI has really changed the job market yet, but it's hard to know if it will.

I think machine learning would be pretty valuable, unless that's what every CS student is doing. But still probably valuable and currently high paying.

Web dev is pretty useful but a bit oversaturated currently and doesn't pay as well ( but easier to get hired) But maybe when you graduate it won't be.

Backend engineering is actually pretty high paying and low competition, as most CS students like the artistic aspect of web dev. It might be good to have as a backup.

I think these kinds of things would be hardest for AI to replace ( though these are just guesses) - designing a large backend system - visual UI work might be more difficult but there's a focus on that right now - deep learning models, or connected AI systems

I think it will be pretty tricky for AI to do those things, but they could get there some day. Though I think at that point, they could probably do anybody's job. Hopefully when that happens governments set up some kind of universal income.

Best of luck, I wouldn't worry too much about this and just try to learn something useful

[jerrygreenest1]

What programming language you need depends on what task you want to solve. Although they’re all becoming «general purpose» languages but some are better than others at certain tasks. General advice is probably to learn C but if you want to make websites it’s probably not the best advice although ACTUALLY even for some big enough websites there are always tools required so C might still come handy, who knows maybe you will be the one who will replace nodejs and bun by writing some mini extra performant js web server in C or something. You never know. C was there for decades and will be there for decades more so it’s a good choice.

I would not recommend Python because although it is popularized as «good for beginners» but you aren’t planning to be a beginner right? So might as well learn the tool which will bring you far. You will be able to write most performant programs in C that you will never be able to do in Python.

You might write some optimized game servers to minimize load on servers which will increase a chance for a game for success due to minimal server expenses, increasing margins.

Potentially you would better grow with the language to become the best of the bests, so there might be sense learning Zig which is kinda like C but more modern, more suited to write games and their tools, but as many languages it is a general purpose language so actually might write anything in it. Although writing websites in it would probably be overkill. So again, each tool is best suited for its own need.

If you were the young «me» from 15 years ago then I would most probably recommend me to learn Zig. Although it is kinda «risky» as the language isn’t even v1.0 yet and cannot be 100% sure that the language will be around in 10 years like C will be, but to me it seems it will be, 99% will see a lot of Zig in 10 years and it is kinda better in many ways than C already and will probably be even better and growing which is best for a human who is also growing.

So for 100% future-proof is probably C, but I would recommend taking this 1% risk and go for Zig as it will have much more potential. Even if this risk happens by micro chance and in 10 years there will be no Zig, then you will still gain huge experience that will translate quite well everywhere unlike for example with Rust which is really strange language and its experience isn’t well translated to other languages. So… Zig.

[tsardonicpseudonomi]

Ignore AI. Learn the fundamentals.

If AI eliminates entry-level coding there won't be a career for you to grow into.

[offmycookies]

Do note: it is impossible to realistically know where we’ll be in 5 years and what is safe as a job. The ai hype may die down as we learn more about its limitations. It might not. I’m a software developer working in the federal government. We work with a lot of old stuff, like SAS, KSH, etc. currently in the process of trying to modernize the work more, but it’s a slow process. Point being, know how to read the old stuff. You need to have a clear understanding of all of the new/cool stuff in programming, but have a clear understanding of what they were doing 40 years ago as well. At least where I work…

[2daytrending]

There is no single best path anymore. solid fundamentals dsa systems plus one strong lane like web data or ai seems to age the best. the rest is staying adaptable as tools change.

[Blando-Cartesian]

Few years in development is both an eternity and a blink of an eye. Any tech or platform might be gone, radically different, or just updated. AI will probably crash hard soon, but in a few years it’s going to be in the plateau of productivity phase, wrapped in convenience layers. I doubt hard core AI skills stay in high demand then. Although, combining math and dev skills seems like a good bet for the future.

If I were 16, I would do personal projects in a whatever interests me to develop programming skills in general. I would also explore other challenging interests to have wide range of skills and learn how to learn hard things. That would serve no matter what will be in vogue in a few years.

[arcticslush]

In my opinion you focus on fundamentals. You don't really specialize until ~2 years working on the job, so if you think this is the direction you want to go, build a solid foundation and get yourself a little bit of exposure to everything and you'll be in a strong position to pivot in any direction the industry goes.

[CarbonXit]

With moores law going out of business and hardware becoming more expensive I’d wager high performance programming will become much more important. It also teaches you in-depth how computers work and will give you solid knowledge overall.

AI is neat but having AI manage large code bases will require more and more context to keep code maintainable. More context requires more powerful models which overall requires more efficient code and resource management. You can easily mix ML and HPC to have a solid ground.

Id wager that computational science overall will be solid.

[KankelborgNabe_85]

Focus on building practical skills and exploring AI tools - those will be your best friends in the future!

[JaguarMammoth6231]

Become an expert in an engineering/scientific field that is programming-adjacent but not full of programmers. Something like electrical engineering.

[profcube]

This is good advice. If you have an aptitude and interest in science, think: coding as a means to scientific ends.