Probably not simple: if you have a degree in a related subject then it may help, but as you know getting into the industry can be very difficult unless you can prove your ability - and a degree in an unrelated subject doesn't do that at all, so even getting into the interview may be difficult.
I'd say for the moment focus on your course - the last year will be the most difficult (or should) so you don't want your attention split two ways, or you risk failing to graduate and wasting the last couple of years completely. In spare time - and not too much of it, you can't afford to fail the university course - get books on relevant subjects (I'd suggest C# as a good starting point, and there are loads of good books on it by Wrox, Addison Wesley, and Microsoft Press) and then start looking for a position which combines IT with your degree subject.
It so happened that most of the decent developers I know well were self-taught. But, in addition to that, I knew a number of those self-taught developers who supposed to get good background in the University, actually do software development, but I understand that they do it very poorly.
What is more wonderful, I later met a number of "professional" software developers, by their formal education at the University or other technical education institution, who were good for nothing, absolutely nothing. Moreover, years ago, I met a leader of one of the leading companies (I'm not going to tell you which one; time has changed since then) who told me: "We have one unwritten rule: we will never consider resume from the candidates who have the word 'software' in their diploma or major specialty". Doesn't sound amazing? I don't say those people were right, but it tells me something.
And even later, some experience helping people on this site opened my eyes on some kind of "programming education": some of the questions asked here suggested that they not just getting bad formal "programming" education, but that their education is purely fake. I mean it; really fake. I could see it by the assignments given by their professors; it looks obvious that those "professors" had no clue on computer science or software development themselves. Not a clue at all. Again, I don't say it's a rule. I just say that this is a noticeable syndrome. (Do you understand what "syndrome" is? It's a set of characteristic symptoms that typically correlated with each other well. That said, you cannot detect the illness in a 100% definitive ways, but the symptoms observed strongly suggest that certain illness is likely.)
And even more amazing case; one of the first rounds of interviews I conducted with some limited number of candidates, one of the candidates was a young girls who answered me: "I don't have any education past my high school". The other candidates were educated in computer science. But she was the only one who had at least some understanding of computer science, were able to answer many of my questions. I did not work with her; she probably had chosen another company, otherwise we would hire her, and not that software engineer who previously worked in Wall Street and later let me down with his poor work and even cheating (was it Wall Street specific "education"? I don't know).
What does it tell me? The software engineering skills do correlate with education, and purely correlate with "software" specialty, or correlate in negative way. This is what I observe these days. The best correlation is, not too surprisingly, is between background in mathematics and software development". By some reason, electrical education gives pure correlation; some of such people have brains which are nearly impossible to turn in right direction; however, I saw cases when such people did very well. I had good experience with some former biologists or people with some "humanitarian" education, in other cases their contribution was a real disaster. And, of course, they are people who took the real top-notch software development University education, and they could be very, very good. But again, not all of them.
Conclusions? Don't be sorry about you formal non-programming education. In fact, your current education might be a lot better. But it does not mean you don't need computer science and software development education. Just the opposite: this is very important. You really need to learn background and fundamentals, not just practical development, but real "hard" computer science. I just say you might be able to learn it by yourself. You just need a level much better than in a typical "programming school". I also don't believe in all those online schools and other courses can help. You have to learn by yourself, and do it very seriously.
I can tell you what you will read the most: criticism and review of your works, and also advice on improving your work. This is something which is hard to get out of school. In my case, I had a small club of peer developers.
And, to encourage you even more: did you hear about so called "specialist's paradox"? It tells us that the best results have been achieved by people who came from other fields of activity. By non-specialists, non-professionals. Such people have wider education, wider fresher views, they bring a lot of ideas from different field of knowledge, they are free from misconceptions which may dominate some professional field during certain period of time. The are usually more enthusiastic and active, less suffer from different psychological complexes. But this only works if they master the new field really seriously (don't get me wrong: by "non-professionals" mentioned above, I meant "self-made people who became better than professionals"). Just look at the history: you will see that major amount of inventions moving our civilization forward has been created by non-specialists, more exactly, people who came from other fields of knowledge. Want to become one of them?
—SA
Updated 10-May-16 6:41am
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