I am currently studying molecular biology and plan on taking computer science when I finish my B.Sc. in the former. I was hoping to combine the two and work in bioinformatics but after reading the post and the comments here I'm feeling a bit discouraged, since it kinda sounds like this is a dying / useless field (although I know this might be a pretty isolated and bit biased sample). I was hoping to know if there is cause for my worries? All comments welcome!
I am a scientist working in molecular biology. Personally, I love my job; I don't know if I could find another career I would enjoy more. I spend about a third of my time tinkering in the lab, a third reading and writing, and a third bullshitting with colleagues about what experiments would be cool to perform. Perfection. I think there is a place for bioinformatics, and I think it will only get more important as time goes on. But, IMO, I think its great usefulness will come in meta-analyses, which are often severely lacking. Analyzing the genome (or proteome, or transcriptome, or any other "-ome') of a tumor is a waste of time in some sense, but it might get you paid quicker. But meta-analyses of the volumes of data that are out there I think is what will tell us what it is we're all looking at. There are too much data for anybody to make heads or tails of. Bioinformatics will be very important to disease treatment in the future, but it hasn't really found its sea legs yet. If I were starting from scratch, I would probably do my graduate work in mathematical biology, because I regret that I don't get to use my math skills in my work as often as I would like. But all in all, the population is getting sicker, so if you're in biomedical research and you have something to contribute, you'll have a job somewhere.
The field I work in is targeted delivery of antisense oligonucleotides (microRNAs, mostly) for treatment of disease. I think this field will get a lot bigger, but that might be wishful thinking. I think you'll see "omics" becoming a dying beast. Unless, of course, the NIH leadership gets populated with a lot of those people, in which case we'll probably sink even more money into it.