Hey! Sorry, been a bit busy these past few weeks. I'm glad you find my insight useful. I feel like when I was deciding what to do, there wasn't really much content or info out there - at least not as much as I expected so hopefully that changes XD
So for the pipeline, I would recommend a book called The VES Handbook of Visual Effects. Now this book has over a thousand pages and to be totally honest, I haven't read most of it XD But, there is a lot of really good information in this book, particularly the final third of the book - it goes into a lot of detail on pipeline and how everything works. If, like me, you consume media better visually, then Pixar in a Box is great:
https://youtu.be/3Iu1Z0h1i1Y DreamWorks also has a cool video on their pipeline:
https://youtu.be/ru0tQRJ4qKs but I highly recommend picking up the book. It'll be worth every penny.
The two career path options you mentioned are both viable - there are jobs that you can get in VFX from both those avenues. I guess it depends more on the skills you can bring to the table, how teachable you are and what its like to work with you. So whichever you choose, as long as you can provide a portfolio of work that a.) is catered towards what you enjoy and what you would like to do (i.e. you mentioned you like programming - so try writing your own basic renderer or particle simulation) b.) demonstrates your ability to work in a team (tldr, you can collaborate or lead and that you are not an a***hole). Additionally, you can look at VFX and Animation studios and look for runner positions (I know ILM give their runners training on roles they want to move into) or apprenticeship/internship schemes. As long as you have (or are working towards) a body of work that demonstrates what you can do in the area you want to go into, you'll have a chance!
The 3 programs I would check out are Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini and Foundry's Nuke. All offer free non-commercial/student versions of their softwares. If programming is your thing, you could write tools for those with Python (industry heavily uses Python and also C/C++) but I would look up tutorials and just try taking something through the pipeline and seeing what you like best (i.e. model something then shade it then animate it then blow it up then light it then comp it all together - or something along those lines).
It also helps knowing people, which is why I highly suggest volunteering at SIGGRAPH. It's costly but you won't get any better exposure anywhere else as a student. You'll have to volunteer for about 25 hours throughout the conference but they organise special SV sessions and the talks are top notch and you'll bump into people responsible for the biggest films in the world. I've volunteered twice already and I would do it another time if I could!
As for what I do on a day to day basis, we basically sit in between production, tech and the artists. We look after the renderfarm, help the artists and production with any issues they have - esentially handling the data that goes in and out of ILM.
Hope that helps