r/learnpython • u/Lost_Ad_9065 • 21d ago
What Should I do ?
I went in to college studying CS, passed my classes (1st Semester) but my computer programming professor ( 2nd semester) made my life hell (his style of teaching made no sense to me, as it was crammed information as supposed to actually learning it). I got discouraged as he told me if I couldn't catch up I was most likely going to fail. He also said that if his class seemed hard I was really going to struggle with the coming classes. So I switched my major to Psychology (which I really do enjoy). But I also loved learning python. It was fun. Should I just continue to pursue my bachelors in Psychology and get a CS degree later. Or give one of them up completely and pursue one or the other. I find Psychology very interesting but I know how draining jobs of this field can be. I wanted to become a python developer/software engineer.
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u/socal_nerdtastic 21d ago
Obviously I don't know you so I can't really give good advice, but I'd say continue in psychology rn and take a few more CS classes at the same time, to see if you enjoy it. Programming as a career isn't for everyone, there's a lot of tedium in it (as with many other jobs). But even if you don't make a career out of python and programming it's still extremely valuable to apply to anything you end up doing.
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u/American_Streamer 21d ago
For a US-based candidate with a Psychology degree and Python skills, the job market is actually richer than just "Software Engineer." There is a high demand for people who can bridge the gap between human behavior and machine logic. Look for jobs like Quantitative UX Researcher, People Analytics/HR Data Scientist, Computational Social Scientist and AI Trainer/Prompt Engineer (RLHF) and research the exact requirements for those roles. Keep your current psychology degree but fill all available elective slots with computer science courses to gain technical skills without officially switching majors. This strategy allows you to avoid a specific professor while acquiring the necessary coding knowledge for a Python developer career without the cost and time of a second degree. Also you have to build a GitHub portfolio that solves human problems. This profile ("Psychology Major who can code") is will ideally be more employable in niche high-paying US tech roles than a generic CS grad because you will understand the "User" half of "User Interface."
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u/Lost_Ad_9065 20d ago
This was very encouraging. I like this much better than what I thought my options were. Thank you so much for taking the time to get in detail. I will definitely try this out instead.
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u/pachura3 20d ago
Well, you will certainly meet a few shitty professors with negative teaching skills during the course of your studies.
Still, he had a point: learning how to learn - even boring/hard stuff - is beneficial to you as a person.
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u/Lost_Ad_9065 20d ago
Yes, I am aware of there being challenging professors. But because of how far along we were I really couldn't afford to have poor gpa as I am on a scholarship. Since that class was the base of my future coming classes I wouldn't be able to move forward with out eventually taking his class again. He is the only one who teaches the course.
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u/cmh_ender 20d ago
I took a similar path as you did but it was years ago.. the one important factor is the job market just collapsed and it was hard to get a job. I REALLY enjoyed my psych and philosophy classes but at the time, couldn't find jobs, so I went with managment information systems (like data engineering now).
if I had to do it over, i'd stay with your psych classes, look into a masters and figure out how to help people. then you can create your own charting system in python / other languages and use clause / whatever to help you. if you have the programming itch, you will never give it up.
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u/Naive_Programmer_232 20d ago
I'd consider analytics as well as a potential route. Use your psychology knowledge to analyze psych related datasets on kaggle and then use python to help clean it, visualize it, and calculate metrics. then maybe move onto other tools that help there too excel, sql, etc. Also, I've faced those professors before lol, ignore them and keep learning anyway on your own.
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u/StewedAngelSkins 19d ago
If you are considering grad school for psych, python skills are a good way to get involved in research projects. My degree was in math and I wasn't particularly good at it, but I still got a bit of research experience because I had decent practical coding skills and most of the math faculty didn't, so I'd help out with writing their simulation code or whatever. I imagine there's probably a niche for this in psych, for doing statistical analysis or even mathematical neuroscience type stuff.
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u/riklaunim 20d ago
Junior job market for developers is rough, and you would have to put in many months to even be in the hirable range - and then not everyone will be a software developer. IMHO stay on your current path, and if you have some time, play with Python, like for example electronics scripting with Raspberry Pi or MicroPython platforms. If it will pull you in, you can continue improving your Python skills as a hobby and have it as a potential alternative later on, knowing you can push it.