Learn Linux programming. A brief introduction

One of the myths that politicians and the media are installing is that those who do not learn programming are going to be the new functional illiterates.. A good excuse to spend taxpayer money teaching children to copy from the blackboard or the Internet code that they do not understand how it works and that they will be unable to recreate themselves.

It is true that Well-taught programming helps develop analytical and problem-solving skills, but, it is not the only discipline with which they can develop.

Not that I have anything that kids (and adults) learn programming, but that is because they want to do it and not just copy and paste code from Stack Overflow.

Learning Linux programming

Linux is perhaps the best platform to learn programming. Unlike Windows and Mac, all code for the entire operating system is available for study and modification. Also has the largest assortment of tools for creating programs and, except for those with a private license, all current and past programming languages ​​have a compatible version.

In general, on Linux you can run your programming skills in 3 levels

The Linux kernel

The kernel is the cornerstone of the operating system. It is the one in charge of managing hardware resources. The Linux Kernel has a new version every 3 months and has the collaboration of thousands of people, many of them on a voluntary basis and others working for companies.

To help develop the Linux kernel, you need two things; a high self-esteem and a deep knowledge of its operation and of the C programming language. The first thing is because although anyone can send modifications (patches), the criticisms of the other developers and Linus Torvalds (the main person in charge of the project) are usually bloody.

If you are not sure about facing criticism, you can try developing a module. This can be a driver for specific hardware, a window manager or any other program that serves as a link between the kernel and the programs used directly by the user.

I repeat that this is something reserved for users with deep knowledge of the operation of the kernel.

Anyway, you can find a complete documentation to get started on the subject here

In general, Linux distributions usually include the necessary tools to compile and run C programs

Script for command interpreter

The command interpreter is a tool to give orders to the system by typing text. In Unix-derived systems it is called shell. Linux distributions come by default with the shell called Bash. The BASH instruction set makes it possible to create programs to automate tasks and do anything else that does not require a graphical interface.

You can create your own scripts in the text editor of your distribution and run them from the terminal emulator.

Bash documentation can be found here.

Creation of applications

We leave for last the ideal way to start, creating applications for the desktop.

There is a lot of consensus that the ideal language to start with is Python. It is already pre-installed in all distributions and has a large amount of documentation and examples. The list of integrated development environments would take us an article by itself.

In general, it is recommended to use Visual Studio Code, but, for me a better option is PyCharmEdu. This tool not only allows you to create programs but also to learn from other programmers of the language.

I will not exhaust all the options in this article, which They include some of the long-standing languages ​​like Java, some newcomers but ascendants like Go or Rust or relics of the past like Logo or Cobol.

The important thing is that if you want to learn to program, you investigate all the languages ​​until you find one with which you feel comfortable. Unless you're looking for a job opening, it doesn't matter what the statistics or job ads say. It has to be good enough for you.

I recently discovered QB64, a version of BASIC very similar to the one I used when I learned to program with the Commodore 64 and I am very happy with the results.