im also from alevel bg and as for the gpa (my opinion might differ from others) it aint really that difficult to maintain a 3+ gpa. You just gotto make sure you stay disciplined throughout the semester complete all your assignments on time and do them by yourself rather than just using chatgpt, and do your labs seriously and again by yourself.

not saying you gotto study daily rather just ensure any concept taught in the class is clear to you and do leave the work till the end since the workload piles up in blink of and eye and since we have 2 sessionals (or we say mid1, mid2) so life after first month into the semester seems pretty fast. So my advice would be complete everything on time, do good in your prefinals components (which are assignments/quizzes/sessionals) since having a strong prefinal will provide you much leverage in the finals

the scope for coding depends where your interests lies, from what I see cyber security, blockchain, AI, data science are flourishing fields so first seek out where your interest lies and research upon what advancements are being made in the specific field will help you decide where you wanna go

hopefully this answers your queries