I talked with a lot of people about what to do after grammar school. We talked about the pros and contras of going to a university or doing an apprenticeship. It depends on your strengths and interests.

I always had a simple method to determine your further profession:

Do what you like, enjoy and makes you happy.

Sometimes it’s called the one billion dollars question: “What job would you do if you had one billion dollars?”.

“1. Unless you truly enjoy programming you should seek another profession. […]
2. […] I’m not saying you should spend every waking moment in front of a computer like I do– it’s unhealthy– but the only way to keep our jobs is to actively keep improving. […]” — codinghorror.com

These aspects perfectly fit on software developing but they also fit on medical science, physics or cooking.