Sounds like you want a project.

You could try making a game. Python has pygame. Godot is a bit of a steeper learning step but has a lot of capabilities. I’ve messed around with each for fun.

Web dev can also be fun, and a very different style of coding. I’ve made things for a loved one who wanted some things for a site they run. Each thing they asked for took me no more than a day but saved them having to hire someone. I also made a little one-file site that I could share with some people as an RPG reference.

There are also coding games, as in games where you write code as part of the gameplay. These can help in that they give you a goal. Known names include computercraft mod for minecraft, screeps as both mmo and arena battle, Shenzhen I/O and other Zachtronics and zach-like games, The Farmer Was Replaced, etc.

And of course, you can always just think of something. I’ve written a few scripts to do simple edits to files, like ‘open each file in the folder this is run in and change blahblah to bloobloo and increment the version number’ or batch renaming files. Did one to find duplicate files and list them for organization/deletion.

I have other things I’ve started but never finished, but I enjoyed working on them, and they weren’t my job, so no worries.

I write Python for fun, I’m not a programmer. The more you learn, the more you can do. I’ve written a lot of scripts and tools to help me automate tasks I do frequently. It’s a lot of fun to dream up an idea and then make it real, and then later add random features that pop into my head. Windows sucks.

Like, you go to your computer and start working on…what?

Most of my work goes into an opensource game.

what people do especially when starting out.

Make some apps for yourself. You’ll probably not use them, or even share them, but it’s a good thing to have a vision of what you want to make.

I just want to learn it to know it.

Being a good programmer takes ages. And even then you’ll probably only know a handful of languages and focus on specific branches. If you just want to know it, you’ll lose a lot of interest pretty soon because sometimes it takes days to fix something and you really need to be able to push trough those rough patches and that’s hard without a goal. Imagine trying to become good at woodworking without actually making furniture.

But im not sure how to apply it to anything realistic.

A lot of stuff already has apps for it. And a lot of things are being worked on. People saw the money and a lot of people jumped on the wagon.

The most realistic thing one can do with programming is to make something that does exactly what they want. And that can even be something small. Like learning how to write scripts that automate simple tasks. I suggest high level languages such as Python, PHP, C# or Java to get going. And only look at low level languages such as C, C++, or Rust when you actually start to understand it.

It depends on what you are interested in. For me it is a mix of stuff that I need or stuff that just interests me. I’m on and off working on a gameboy emulator, or I’ve written a command line parser library because I wanted so see how it works internally, or a terminal emulator

I like to automate processes I keep repeating on my machine. For example, there are some documents I receive every month, like bank statements and phone bills. Since the naming conventions of those files are atrocious, I wrote a little program to automatically fix those for me

Some people also like participating in the development of open source software. That requires you to be a somewhat decent programmer already, though, as you’ll have to work with integrated systems

I started out with games and simulators. I tended just to come up with some game logic and then see what happened when I let it play out with many entities. When I started my computer science degree at uni I tended to write more code that had something to do with recent lecture material. Implementing Distance Vector Routing, messing around with compression, applying reinforcement learning to my own games.

Now that I have a job it’s a bit harder to stay motivated for all this, but it’s still kinda the same. I just write whatever my brain comes up with.

There’s a mix of reasons to start a hobby project.

One reason for starting a hobby project is the learning experience. For example, learning a new programming language or a particular tech stack. The goal isn’t to build something useful. Often it can be building things that already exist. For example, a Minecraft server or a Gameboy emulator.

Another reason is to build something useful for you. Maybe you have an idea of a program you feel should exist. Or maybe a program exists, but not in the way you want. Building it yourself can bridge this gap. Hopefully someone else might find your program useful.

Then there’s also the people who do it for fun. It’s kind of like building a model railway. The process of building it can be more fun and rewarding than actually using it.

Regarding Linux, it’s mostly a matter of preference. There are some things that are easier in Linux. Mac and Windows can sometimes be ” overly protective” and prevent the user from doing particular things. Linux has generally fewer of such barriers.

The best way to learn it, is to set yourself a goal/problem, define as best as possible how many unique issues that problem can be broken into, then start solving them one-by-one, periodically stopping to evaluate how they fit together.

Learning the best languages and structures to use will come as result of this.

Thank you to everyone who commented. You guys are basically geniuses as far as im concerned, and I have a good library of content to look back on now when I have time to get into it. The hardest part will be coming up with a project so simple that I can do it, but one thats interesting enough for me to actually stick with. Maybe something at first like, at 6 pm on Tuesdays, it flashes a gif onscreen. Or maybe a super simple text game.

I like to solve everyday problems through programming. My primary way of doing it is just Python on Windows right now, but Linux does make programming languages a bit easier to access. (And most of the stuff I write would easily run on Linux too.)

Every time I go “damn, this is more complicated/boring than it needs to be and the manual handling is so unnecessary, I wish I could automate this”, I start making a script.

For example, I’m an amateur photographer, so I have scripts for dealing with photos. One is a photo importer/backup tool, because I didn’t trust the importers in the apps to do it right (Adobe trauma). I’m writing scripts for report purposes. One script I wrote puts all of the photos I have on the map.

Something as simple as using Shell Scripting to automate tasks (say, rename all files in a directory according to a certain pattern) is programming in Linux and most of these you can even do directly in the shell (i.e. just type a few lines of code on the command line directly, no need to have a file with the program or do any kind of compilation).

Also it’s stupidly simple to program in certain languages like Perl and Python in Linux mainly because you’re just working in the command line interface and most of what those languages do is that kind of thing (rather than graphical UI stuff), those languages come almost invariably pre-installed in Linux distros, and you can use the same trick as with shell scripting of just starting the interpreter and type the code directly to run it.

Beyond that, if you’re actually doing stuff like server-side software development, Linux is overwhelmingly dominant in that space and it’s way simpler to, when targetting Linux servers, to just work on your own Linux as developer (user) machine because all the tools for remote access to Unix machines are there nativelly and work seamlessly, plus you can can have the developer machine double as a development environment for server side development (as Linux can still act as a server machine even when you’re running it as a user machine).

I programmed a lamp bypass for my old projector do I could then use a different lamp and turn it into a UV projector. Programming is not sophisticated stuff. Its the reason for having a computer. People could write, mail, watch TV, play etc just fine before computers.

I just want to learn it to know it

Acquiring a skill just to have it isnt how it works. Skills are perishable, meaning you will unlearn them just as easy. Of course much experience would take a long time but still.

I suggest imagining what you could do with programming. What little problems do you face that could be solved by programming?

You also dont need to write another operaring system or debug “a whole game”. If you decide you want to learn programming (because its fun or because you like to create and fix shit), you can make an app run on your computer or phone that didnt run before. I did exactly that and my programming skills are pretty small. You dont have to know all the algorithms or study it to do useful stuff with it.

I made a couple text based games, solved some advent of code riddles and so on. Its fun and it helps seeing the world as a canvas instead of a fixed structure that is applied to you.

I have trouble understanding what people are actually programming if it isn’t their job. Like, you go to your computer and start working on…what?

I’ve written some simple shell scripting to ease repetitive tasks, that’s about it (like play random video/audio files in MPV media player, resize & convert images I post on my website, and so on). Does that count as programing? ;)

For me it’s:

Oh shit, that last update borked my computer… wth is postfix? How was it corrupted? Whatever… How do I reinstall it… [look up answer an Ask Ubuntu- Copy/Paste]; okay cool. Wait, losing postfix also broke my graphics driver?! Why? Whatever… I guess I should reinstall it… [look up answer an Ask Ubuntu- Copy/Paste]; okay cool.

Then I forget everything I just did because Ubuntu rarely breaks and also I think it was just my ssd dying…