When the opportunities present themselves, be prepared to work hard and learn quickly. How you go about things is more important than what exactly you know most of the time.
Don't worry too much about emerging technologies or trends. Some seem to be higher paid, but I would recommend finding one or two paths you like and sticking with them. Most of them are as in demand as they have ever been and are largely immune to automation.
To prepare for any career in programming: write lots to code, do it now! It will likely be crap code, don't worry, everyone started writing crap code, eventually you get better at it. Read a lot of code, you will not understand most of it, try anyway.
The more you do the above, the more you will know what is going on, the more people you will find with similar interests and eventually you may find a mentor, too.
As for "cubicle slave", you may have to start from there, it doesn't mean you have to stay there.
Founders can be any age. The latter, I've known some in their late 20's. So you are either thinking 5-7 years out or ~15.
I'm older than the average here, my startup was decades ago and I made my career in more traditional tech (cubicles and labs). But my experience was surrounding myself with smart (and smarter) people. You only need to be smart enough to recognize their talent(s). Putting skills together, keeping them together and finding a common goal is the mark of a good leader.
Many commenters here are pretty down on college, but for me, school was about meeting smart people. You can do it anywhere, there are other paths, but getting into a Tier 1 college will give you an advantage as there is always a clique. As a leader, you will want to round yourself out - business, psychology, marketing... where you will meet smart people of a different type.
Even if you don't have the great idea, by the time you finish your education you will probably be more well-rounded than your peers and you will have a lot of connections. So a few years in the cubicles, an MBA, deeper study and you can find a route to climb up to that ambition.
One other note - I got to where I was because a lot of other people thought a particular job was too hard. I "fell" into these jobs. There is really hard stuff out there, but it wasn't as hard as they thought. That got me more choices in my career.
Read up about the evolution of various technologies like Databases, Servers, architectures, computing power in devices. How they improved over time and what components led to the improvement. For example, the amount of RAM has increased over time in mobile phones and that lead to the advent of multi-tasking in phones. Similar things have happened in multiple places in technology and increased the efficiency, power and throughput by many folds.
What will really make you as a programmer is the ability to pick up entirely, new things. And what really makes that happen is having had that experience before, many times, so many times that you know that whatever new things comes along will at least resemble something that you've already done.
In short, it's more about developing confidence in yourself and nurturing enthusiasm for programming itself. I think that can take you a long, long way....
learn online, and while a mentor is great I think teaching yourself offers the best lessons. youtube, reading other peoples code, etc. just don't give up and you're good.
as for leadership, start building projects and a solid portfolio. if you don't end up working for yourself or finding someone to start something with you'll at least have a faster way to the top in a corporate environment with a lot of experience.
Absolutely. The world will always need pen testers and associated crew.
As for "leadership position": that's a privilege you've gotta earn. Leadership isn't about technical prowess, it's about experience. Actually, it isn't even about technology, but about people. You always lead people; and doing that well takes a very different skill set to writing pretty code. If you want to lead, don't become one of those nerds who is incapable of normal human interaction. You're going to need other people, learn to get along with them now.
You sound like somebody with a lot of potential, and I like that you're being proactive here. I wish you the very best of luck!
Programming is not hard. Don't focus on software development as a career path.
Software is only a tool, and most production software is badly written because the customer doesn't care about design patterns, only whether the product works or not. Despite the prevailing opinion on HN, learning to program is not difficult and a reasonable person with technical training in any field can pick it up in a few months from scratch. The current high salaries paid for writing CRUD apps (and almost everything is CRUD apps no matter how much JavaScript you put in front of it) won't last as the barrier to entry is ever lower. Very little that could be called 'engineering' gets done in a software context.
Once you've learned two programming languages with very different concepts (e.g. C++/Scala), you'll be able to pick up any language/programming concept easily. Don't waste time learning the flavor-of-the-month JavaScript framework, it's a waste of mental energy and if you ever need to know it you'll be able to learn everything anyone actually uses it for in a week or two of concentrated study. For the time you spent learning React in and out, you could have taught yourself rocket propulsion,
Focus instead on developing the patience needed to learn complex ideas in depth, alongside a broad range of soft skills.
If you go to university, pick a scientific or engineering discipline - ECE will keep you close to computing, but ME is a good choice too. Physics or Mathematics are both also good choices. Don't major in CS unless you really care about the mathematical foundations of computing (which have nothing to do with most programming you're ever likely to encounter). In my experience it's very easy to teach a physicist to program, but the converse is not true.
Mentors are everywhere, but they're not necessarily going to mentor you 1:1. Professors at university are mentors. Coworkers are mentors. Anyone smarter than you that you have the opportunity to spend time with is a mentor. There's no need to codify the relationship. To get the most out of these relationships, spend time figuring out the most important, concrete things you'd like to learn and pose them as questions.
To develop leadership skills, you need to first master self-examination. This is very difficult and takes a lot of mental fortitude, and life experience you may not have had the chance to develop yet. This is a journey I'm still on so I don't have much useful advice, other than that.
> it's very easy to teach a physicist to program, but the converse is not true.
Programming isn't everything, and there are a lot of subjects out there that will make you a better programmer.
https://mxstbr.blog/2016/12/a-dream-come-true/
https://medium.com/@lydiahallie/advice-from-a-19-y-o-girl-so...
Why ?
Context matters.