Changing career to programist after bachelor engineering

depression
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Hello,
I would like to ask about your opinion at my problem. I am 23 depressed right studying civil engineering at final bachelor year at top university. When I look back to my past I see that I was extremely stupid. I choose it, because it seemed to me that Contractor it’s just a cool job. I was really good at math and programming was really intresting for me, but i thought that i can change to it at any time. I was always intrested to computer science, back to when I was 13, I even made some money for making web sites.
My huge mistake was that, I didn’t change my studies on first or second year, or even 3rd year. Now i lost 5 years for this degree, and I will write bachelor thesis, I still hate it. Now i can change it for master degree on computer science. What I am worry about that it’s too late. Now children are learning programming at the age od 10. Also master degree won’t teach me such good programming skills like bachelor. Being good programmer always seemed something great for me.

I am really in pinch.

I had a really big depression, I was on SSRI, SRNI and others, I had a therapy but it didn’t worked. After these 5 years I think my brain doesn’t work so good, and it’s not so sharp like it used to be.

I don’t know if staying at branch which I hate, and I am really bad at it, but I can make some money from it, and maybe in ten years somehow it will be.

Or change it to software engineering, and try to learn some programming language. I am really worry that I am too stupid for it and that starting software engineering at 23 with no experience, it’s really bad idea.
When I look at sorting alghoritms they look really exciting to me, and I can understand them, but I know that even some children at the age 10 can do it. I don’t know if anybody would hire me in 3 years(master on computer science with presemester for freshers is 2,5 year) on a software engineer job, where I could still develope my skills.

If you have any questions please ask, and please I really want to know what do you think.

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It sounds like there are a few interwoven issues at play here.

I don’t think it’s ever ‘too late’ to change your path. I know it can feel like that. I have felt like that. I changed my path/chose webdev in my thirties and so far, it seems to be working out. No years are a waste because they have brought you to where you are now.

From what I can tell, your depression doesn’t just stem from your choice of study? Maybe you can take smaller steps towards a different path while concentrating on feeling better.

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I mostly agree with @allisonplus here. I think you need to separate out your physiological depression issues from your career related ones. If you are struggling with depression, then you really should see a medical professional. It might take multiple approaches and seeing multiple people before you find something that works.

As for your career, I think it’s definitely possible to start doing programming or computer science after getting your bachelors in something else. I know of lots of people who came to computer science after doing something else and they’re doing just fine. However, instead of jumping straight into a Master’s program, I would suggest you buy a few textbooks and start working through them on your own. Get one for data structures and algorithms and one for learning some programming language. Go through the examples and see if you still like it. If you can go through a couple of books and at the end of it still like programming, look at Master’s programs.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to get a software engineering job after your Masters if you have good grades and have a solid set of skills at the end of it.

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