How I Transitioned From Psychology to Programming

I studied a degree in psychology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina. For those that do not know, in order to study at the UBA it is necessary to do the CBC, which means “Ciclo Básico Común” (translated into English, it would be something like “Common Basic Cycle”). Basically, the CBC is an instance in which one has to study, generally in a year, some random subjects to become acquainted with study methods and strategies for university, with the purpose of raising the education level of students. Some people say that, in fact, the CBC is a screening to prevent a lot of people from studying at university (but we won’t discuss this topic right now).

In this way, it was not until I finished the CBC that I started to be interested in scientific research. I really wanted to be a researcher. Then, throughout the years in my career I was careful about my grades, I tried to find some team research, to study statistics, methodology, English, and, of course, programming. Nearly two years before finishing the career, I started to program in the R statistical programming language. R, for those who don't know, is one of the best tools for data science, next to Python. I started with R because it's the most widely used tool in academia; besides, it was very easy for me to access good R books. My first book in programming was Data Science for Psychologists, by Hansjörg Neth.

On this same line, a few months later I started to learn Python in the courses Programación en Python - UNSAM and Full Stack Python - Codo a Codo. Apart from that, I was doing the freeCodeCamp curriculum, learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, mainly because I needed to make a website for a psychology movement (the “Movimiento Estudiantil por la Psicología Científica”, known by its acronym “MEPC”).

At the same time, my research career was growing, but something strange happened. I realized that I loved researching (I did my undergraduate thesis about the replicability crisis and open science practices in psychology), however I hated the existing bureaucracy on it. I referred to the “title-itis”: it all comes down to titles and scholarships in academia. I also realized it requires too much effort to live decently (at least in Argentina), with very low wages and a horrible system (culture of “publish or perish”). At this point, it’s when I reached a breaking point: what I had been preparing myself for over the years, it was not what I really wanted.

However, despite the discouragement, not all was lost. I enjoyed programming a lot. I was good at it. I only had to do a very little switch: leave off reading scientific articles to start reading documentation, code, and make my own code projects. And that is what I did. To sum up, it wasn’t a enormous change, because in many ways the jobs were quite similar: firstly, both require studying and researching a lot; secondly, both demand sitting on a chair for long hours; and, thirdly, both involve having interest in logical and abstract thinking.

Final words

All in all, I can’t deny that: If I hadn’t studied psychology, maybe I wouldn't have known programming. I really like scientific research, but I prefer working as a programmer, where my real skills are more valorated than certificates and titles. And this is a personal preference, I don’t want to say that academia is not valuable: without science, we wouldn’t be nothing as humanity. I only want to say that the academia system is not for me. From my point of view, I only made a small switch: I went from studying science with job expectations and programming as a hobby, to considering programming as a job and science as a hobby.