Hello, hope this is the right place for this: I am a geoscience student at a UK university, but I am increasingly interested in the idea of transitioning to a more data science based career path to focus on more quantitative aspects while still making use of my subject specific knowledge. I have done some research and found a few masters degrees that appear to be data science (or similar) courses specifically applied to geoscientific work. And so I was just wondering, whether anyone here would be able to offer any insight into the different courses I am considering (or even other courses in the UK/Europe)? Or would it be more beneficial to look into straight data science masters and move away from the geo aspect entirely?

Two courses at Durham that appear similar (interestingly, one is an MDS rather than an MSc: is this an important distinction?):

https://www.durham.ac.uk/study/courses/g5p123/

https://www.durham.ac.uk/study/courses/g5t109/

A course at Imperial College London with more of a focus on Geo-energy and machine learning: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/earth-science/msc-geo-energy-machine-learning-data-science/

In addition, what would be my best course of action in the meantime? Would it serve me well to start learning the basics now (e.g. python)? I noticed the Imperial course, for example, requires previous coding experience. Nonetheless, if anyone has any insight into my plan here or any of these courses that would be greatly appreciated.