UCSD CS Program Alternatives? Could one attain a programming career with a physics degree?

ucbalumnus
Sun, 25 Sep 2016 02:54:34 +0000

In industry, it is not that rare for people to go into software development jobs from non-CS backgrounds, due to self-education in CS. However, that is a more difficult or roundabout way for most people than just studying CS in college. Physics and cognitive science can be useful for some specific areas of computing, as you have noticed.

If you have to major in something other than CS, you may want to take as many of the lower division CS courses as you can, plus whatever upper division courses of interest that you can get into. However, given how impacted the CS major is, it is likely that the upper division courses are very difficult for non-majors to get into.