Coding as a career?

I'm going to be less optimistic than most.

If you try programming on the pi and find it fun and engaging and interesting, then it's worth building that skillset and turning it into a vocation. It will still be difficult to find your first job though, as most employers want fresh faced new graduates in a "relevant" degree.

That means enticing someone to employ you through other means. This could be using your programming to help you do a different job better, contributing in a substantial way (i.e. a few hundred hours of unpaid work) to open source software or relying on nepotism/cronyism.

If you're just looking for a new career and that's the only reason you're learning to code, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. Even in the same industry, something like software testing is far less glamorous (and only a little less well paid) and is also suitable for people with a degree of autism, so explore things like that. People that don't enjoy programming have short unhappy careers because they're amongst others that absolutely love it.

Don't worry about AI, or even about jobs being offshored. Both of those will happen but almost every company still needs UK based people, and someone still needs to program and configure the AI, to test its output, to fix and supplement it.

Bear in mind though that programming is (counter-intuitively) a very social activity. You almost always program within a team, and good communication is essential. Luckily most programmers are good at clear unambiguous communication, as that's what computers need, so good interpersonal skills aren't as important as in many roles.

I'm going to be less optimistic than most.

If you try programming on the pi and find it fun and engaging and interesting, then it's worth building that skillset and turning it into a vocation. It will still be difficult to find your first job though, as most employers want fresh faced new graduates in a "relevant" degree.

That means enticing someone to employ you through other means. This could be using your programming to help you do a different job better, contributing in a substantial way (i.e. a few hundred hours of unpaid work) to open source software or relying on nepotism/cronyism.

If you're just looking for a new career and that's the only reason you're learning to code, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. Even in the same industry, something like software testing is far less glamorous (and only a little less well paid) and is also suitable for people with a degree of autism, so explore things like that. People that don't enjoy programming have short unhappy careers because they're amongst others that absolutely love it.

Don't worry about AI, or even about jobs being offshored. Both of those will happen but almost every company still needs UK based people, and someone still needs to program and configure the AI, to test its output, to fix and supplement it.

Bear in mind though that programming is (counter-intuitively) a very social activity. You almost always program within a team, and good communication is essential. Luckily most programmers are good at clear unambiguous communication, as that's what computers need, so good interpersonal skills aren't as important as in many roles.