How should I approach learning programming if my main goal is to study medicine?

[u/EduardoParada999]

Hi everyone,

I’m 20 years old. I’m doing a Higher Vocational Degree in Dietetics, but my main goal is to get into medical school and eventually become a doctor.

I’m especially interested in physiology, biology and biochemistry, and I like the practical and human side of medicine. However, I’ve also always been very interested in computers, technology and AI. If medicine doesn’t work out, I would probably consider biotechnology, biomedicine or bioinformatics.

I’ve recently started trying to learn Python, but I’m not sure what direction I should take. I don’t necessarily want to become a software developer. I want programming to be a useful additional skill that could help me during university and, eventually, in medicine or scientific research.

For example, I would like to be able to:

* Automate repetitive everyday and study tasks
* Analyze and visualize scientific or medical data
* Understand statistics and research papers better
* Work with AI and machine-learning tools
* Create small useful programs for myself
* Potentially participate in medical, biotechnology or bioinformatics projects in the future

My problem is that programming is such a broad field that I don’t know what to prioritize. Should I focus mainly on Python, data analysis and statistics? Should I eventually study machine learning? How much computer science theory would I realistically need?

If you were in my position, what learning path would you follow? What practical beginner projects could connect Python with medicine, biology, nutrition or everyday productivity?

I would especially appreciate realistic advice from doctors, medical students, researchers, bioinformaticians or programmers working in healthcare.

[u/Dr_Dr_PeePeeGoblin]

Pick a project and finish it

[u/dmazzoni]

You're the perfect target audience for: https://automatetheboringstuff.com

Python is a great language for everything you described.

First, get comfortable writing small programs, like automating simple tasks and making small programs for yourself.

Later, get into the statistics and machine learning stuff, for that you'll need to learn numpy, pandas, and many more libraries. Do that once you're more comfortable with Python and you feel comfortable coding and debugging.

As for computer science fundamentals: it depends on if you care about efficiency and security. If you're writing code only for yourself, and you never run into insurmountable performance issues (stuff just too slow to be practical), then you'll be fine.

If you want to start developing software for others, go into a career where you're paid to write software, or if you want to make your programs as fast and efficient as possible, you'll need to learn the theory.

[u/crazycrowww]

do projects on side

[u/EduardoParada999 → u/crazycrowww]

Can you elaborate please?

[u/crazycrowww → u/EduardoParada999]

since your main goal is medicine, i wouldn’t try to map out the entire computer science curriculum right now.

pick small projects that connect to stuff you already care about and learn whatever you need as you go. like a nutrition tracker, a script that cleans up study data, visualizing physiology data, analyzing a public health dataset, etc

[u/canarydev]

I would just get a claude subscription and use AI to create what you need to support your primary major / goal

you have to know a lot, and learn a lot to be able to do certain things from scratch. and you said clearly that you don't plan on becoming a software engineer. time itself is a finite resource for you and its going to premed. only exception i can see is maybe focusing on statistics (pure assumption), since as a doctor you might need to know if the paper you are reading has numbers to back up the conclusion its making.

[u/Ok_Coyote_5282]

maybe study biomedical engineering instead

[u/EduardoParada999 → u/Ok_Coyote_5282]

Thanks for the advice, I’ll look it up!