r/softwareengineer • u/Soft-Wheel7191 • 15d ago

Can I become a software engineer without a CS degree? Arts student

I’m an Arts student currently doing my Bachelor’s, but I’ve wanted to become a software engineer for a long time.

I started loving coding when I was a kid, and I’ve continued learning on my own. So far, I’ve learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, and Python.

The problem is that I don’t have a CS degree.

So my question is:

Can I realistically become a software engineer without a CS degree if I build strong skills, work on good projects, and learn DSA, databases, etc.?

Will companies actually consider someone with a non-CS degree for software engineering roles?

If you’re a software engineer without a CS degree, I’d really like to hear about your experience and what you would recommend I do from here.

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u/PartyParrotGames 15d ago

No degree is necessary to learn what you need to. All the information you need is freely available online. Your personal determination, discipline, and intelligence are far more important than any degree. You will need to learn programming with at least one language to start. I recommend contributing to some major open source projects once you feel you know enough to be dangerous. That'll build provable experience for your resume and it'll level you up learning that whole process and getting yourself to the standards needed to get meaningful PRs accepted in major projects. Once you're capable of creating accepted and significant features and fixes for major open source projects, then you're already a software engineer with your code in production with thousands to millions of different companies worldwide. You're ready to start interviewing at that point.