I think there is an important caveat that is sometimes implicit here.
Most people that give you advice have not gone from 0 to hero with Rust. It does not mean it impossible, but it does imply that we do not know how hard it is.
Most are programmers or computer science graduates (or related fields), and have been for years before learning Rust.
In their minds, it feels like beginners can start from Rust and just keep learning, but imho that's very unfair and can get users into a lot of confusion including self-doubt / impostor-syndrome.
This is akin to say: of course we can start learning physics by learning about quantum mechanics, after all, it's its own thing. But those are fallacies.
You study psychology and I think it should be expected that we learn in a Piagetian sense of assimilation: we need the germs of structures to add newer blocks. Without a solid base, there isn't a place to add new cognitive structures. If Piaget is too old then others suggesting this are: Mitchel Resnick, Seymour Papert, etc.
I think that you should start by learning Python very well (or a related high-level language).
There are many reasons for this, none is obviously neccesary but in my mind they are close to it:
- Look at statistics: how many non-programmers learnt Rust as first language? (You can run a poll on Reddit.)
- Where does Rust sit in complexity with respect to say Python
- How much easier is it to learn rust by first being comfortable with concepts like: inheritance, manipulation of bytes, file-permissions, command line interface etc. All these aren't even considered by most giving advice, it's forgotten that this is overhead for you.
My advice then, is: learn python well (learn it using types), get used to CLI, Github, reading others code, and all data structures and concepts like inheritance.
Then, learn Rust if you fancy it.
.
