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.

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.

I like microcontrollers. It is fun to see code do physical things. Plus, you can learn how simple computers work, which helps get an understanding of regular ones. Combine that with home automation, and you have an infinite time sink.

Most embedded systems programming software runs nicely on Linux (or sometimes even exclusively). PlatformIO, Arduino IDE, STM Cube, ESP-IDF… Obviously, something like a Raspberry Pi (and its alternatives) runs Linux itself.

Although, quite often, I find myself saying that since 90% of work and hobbies is either in a browser (including electron) or a shell anyways. Doesn’t really matter how the task bar / dock looks when all you do is run the same 10 programs

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.

But im not sure how to apply it to anything realistic

I think that’s a misconception a lot of people have: unless you get a job in the field, or get into open source work, you probably won’t. Not at any amount of scale, anyway.

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

For myself, I find that (outside of work and open source) I don’t really USE my programming skills, except that knowing programming enables me to think about problems in my life in a more analytical way. Every once in a while, I might be doing something tedious and techy that I’ll take an hour or two to automate. For example, I’ve done that for re-organizing and renaming video and music files. I also helped my wife a few hundred pages of text from a wiki she maintains for her D&D guild, when they were migrating to a new provider.

im just unsure what people do especially when starting out.

If you have an idea for something that you find interesting or are passionate about or would use personally, great! That’s extremely rare, so don’t stress about it. My go-to recommendation for starter projects is to just re-make something that already exists. That gives you very specific, achievable goals. Specifically" I recommend re-making “dir.exe” or “ls” (the Linux equivalent), which are command-line programs that list files on your computer.

If you can work a project like that, even if you never “finish” it, and you get any enjoyment out of it, that’s a good sign. If you find that you dread working on it, or really struggle with it, then that’s a good indicator that maybe programming isn’t for you. It’s a useful skill to have, but you shouldn’t feel bad if it just isn’t your thing. I always like the idea of being a musician, and toon guitar lessons as a kid, but whenever I would sit down to practice, I found I would rather be doing almost anything else. Eventually, it occurred to me that I can love music and musicianship, without being a musician.

What is really meant by “programming” when people say they like to use linux for it?

I think it’s just a matter of personal preference among the type of people that are drawn to programming. Linux doesn’t just LET you have a very high level of control over things that happen “under the hood”, it often MAKES you have to deal with some things that Windows or iOS would traditionally keep hidden (to varying degrees, depending on distro). That ends up being appealing to the kind of tinkerer folks who are also attracted to programming.

I don’t think there’s any inherent reason that Linux is better for programming, except MAYBE that there’s more of a programming ecosystem built around it, because more programmers end up using it. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

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.

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…

Automation is a common reason to program outside of a job. I created tools to scrape websites, control my home entertainment system, and nerdy shit like pulling stats from my router. Someone who does a podcast that I enjoy created a thing that lets him know the state of their garage door via an LED (open vs closed). Silly stuff like this is really about scratching a personal itch more than it’s about solving life issues. It’s fun for some people and probably not fun for others.

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

So, I make things for myself to replace commercial software that either doesn’t exist or that is becoming (or will become) enshittified like all commercial software.

I like to cook, for instance. It’s a hobby of mine. Cooking, BBQ, grilling, baking, all of it. So of course, I have recipes and they are important to me. I could spend all my time painstakingly entering all my recipes into recipes dot com or whatever, right? But of course, as soon as I do that, their barely usable app that does almost everything I want (and a hundred things I don’t give a shit about) gets updated in the third update of the week (rolleyes) and they have completely changed the UI and on top of that, they removed a feature that I used daily.

OR - I could just make my own fucking app. Which I did. It’s awesome, it does everything I need and nothing I don’t. It also doesn’t update every thirty seconds and become less and less usable or require me to completely overhaul my workflow because the programming staff and middle management need to justify their existences.

I also recently made a wishlist extension for Firefox, because Amazon removed the ability to add non-Amazon items to their wishlist. I have probably a dozen other ideas I’m working on at any given time. None of this is to make money, but just to make my life more convenient and unplug myself from the wider (bullshit) Internet as much as possible.

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.

I wrote a little bit of code to tell me if or when my electricity would be cheaper if I used on demand pricing instead of flat rate. Basically anything you might use excel for could be a programming problem.

For other hobby projects and “why Linux” it’s easier to sew things together than windows, generally speaking.

Example:

Every time I sit down at my PC the first thing I usually do is open a terminal: it is both my launcher and my file manager. I have several programs with TUI (terminal user interface) or text based API (which is an applied programming interface) and I keep my notes in plain text. One type of note I keep is an “atomic” note inside my zettelkasten (this is a fancy way of keeping track of ideas and the way they connect together, but you need to revisit them for it to be useful. Kinda like anki / spaced reputation I guess).

So enough background, here’s the idea and the programming:

• If I always open a terminal, it’s a good place to put stuff I want to see.

• There are two things I want to see: twice a day I want to see a note, the rest of the time I want to see the 3 or 4 most important tasks on my todo list

• I want randomized notes and I want it to be automatic.

One of the easiest things you can do in a terminal is “echo” text. So I started by, in my terminal “rc” file (the configuration file that tells the terminal what to do when you start it) echoing my todo list as the very last step in the start process. Then it’s refinement. First don’t give me the whole list, use shell tools to show the head of the list. Now make a conditional statement that says “if there’s a file called “temp” in some folder give me the Todo list, otherwise do nothing”. Basically we follow the incremental logic train until you get the final product:

• If no file exists, print a note (at random) and then make the file
• If the file exists write part of the todo list
• Every 6 hours, delete the file automatically with cron

Neat you just programmed a lame, but useful tool.

To get started with programming, find a hobby project that you absolutely love working on.

For me it was making websites about pokémon.

Then websites with dynamic content, that players could sign up for and change.

Many years later I started working on game engines

You don’t need Linux to do programming. There are plenty of professionals and hobbyists that use only Windows, or only iOS.

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