I’ve always wanted to understand what is actually meant by this. I have wanted to get into programming for years, did some basic python and c, but could never really progress. Not necessarily a linux question but I know since most distros come with libraries already, it’s popular to use for programming.
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 don’t know enough to make an entire program or debug a game, so im just unsure what people do especially when starting out.
Also I don’t really want to learn it for a job. I just want to learn it to know it. But im not sure how to apply it to anything realistic.
If you want examples of what people work on check out the public github repositories, they range from big open source projects with multiple developers, testers, etc to small projects only one person has worked on.
Many languages/build chains will provide template projects these days to give you some baseline to build from instead of an empty directory. Maven archetypes for example in Java or https://start.spring.io/ for spring projects in Java/kotlin/groovy. But that’s just to give you some structure and frameworks so you’re not starting with a blank canvas.
Different languages will appeal to different practices too, like a compiled language you’ll want to leverage debuggers and logging, but an interactive language, or one that offers both compiled and interactive, may have a REPL or command line prompt to work against to try out ideas before saving them in a script or class file.