This is fantastic, thank you so much for the thoughtful response!

I happen to be super interested in systems programming (OSes, DBs, PLs), but I've worried that those fundamentals might be superseded by AI, whether through a higher-level abstraction or just better automated code generation. Glad to hear an experienced opinion to the contrary.

I think I'll need to come back and read this a couple more times to pull out all the advice here, I appreciate this much to chew on :)