Well. I wanted to study math.

Now LLMs got good enough at it that the field is having a public nervous breakdown: the Leiden Declaration (june, imu-endorsed). Then 25 fields medalists, Tao(!) included, putting their names on A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics / mathandai.org. The sudden line is: mathematics is not about solving problems, it is about "conceptual understanding, insight, fertile ground, the long absorption of ideas into a human mind".

Which is funny, because for decades the "Math industrial complex" they built did not reward system thinkers: it rewarded theorem-proving robots grown out of math olympiad kids of math professors. The scoreboard was the unsolved problem. Now the scoreboard is being eaten by something that does not need being lucky to be born in a math/physics professor's family, being lucky to find a good advisor, etc., and the arrogant club that sat on the pedestal for doing "the most intellectually challenging thing a human can do" is now crybaby club writing petitions. That part made me review a lot of what I used to treat as sacred knowledge and people I worshiped.

I still think learning mathematics is one of the best things you can do: at the very least as brain fitness. A fit body is just better equipped than an unfit one for whatever task; same with a mind - math is calisthenics for the brain. Calisthenics does not make you a mountaineer, but it makes you fit enough that real mountaineering (not hiking!) is even on the table.

That is the one useful frame I have found for our situation.

BTW, as @monerostar said, you are not supposed to pick What You Will Be For The Rest Of Your Life while the ground is moving: that demand is what is eating you, and it is a fake demand!!! In uncertainty the things worth learning are the ones that make you fit (physically and intellectually) for different problems.

Legs-on-ground skills never hurt. IMO do things that pay cash: I have done things for cash back when I was not allowed to work: from catalog modeling to rope access jobs to being part of physical pentesting groups ))). And BTW I never chose them in the identity sense: I just needed money :)

I think your main problem is this: you feel like you "need" a path in theory. You do not yet have a real sense that you actually need one. Theoretical need produces your paralysis. Only urgency produces motion. You cannot think your way into a vocation from the couch while asking the internet to guarantee the vocation will still exist ))

IMO, coding is not dead: the junior-who-types-what-a-machine-already-types version is. Medicine is not dead either, trades, hands, diagnosis-in-the-real-world, anything where the bottleneck is still a human standing in a place and being held liable for the end result... None of them require you to marry them forever!

Experiment with something that puts physical cash in your hand this month.

You asked what is still worth learning: making yourself fit for many things including still learning math and other things as brain's fitness, well, at least that is what I am doing now, among other things.

You will be fine. Not because the world is fine. Because a person who can move, think, and get paid (whatever it takes!) is harder to break than a person waiting for the correct five-year plan. You are already on a Monero forum. You will be fine. <3