In practice, you don't have to know any of these things to be (or at least pass for) a programmer. Work at a large company, someone else takes care of the build

In practice, you don't have to know any of these things to be (or at least pass for) a programmer. Work at a large company, someone else takes care of the build. Use a git GUI app/IDE to take care of source control. Don't use anything new. Of course, you probably won't progress very far career-wise (or maybe you'll become a manager...) if you never venture out of the little box. But the amount of effort you'll have to invest to reap a solidly upper-middle class income is pretty minimal. If you spend 2-3 years in industry and don't get fired, you probably know how to code well enough to satisfy your employer. And at that point you're probably gonna get more (career) value working on soft skills like planning projects, managing expectations, navigating bureaucracies, etc.