Start by automating your tasks. First, you'll get more efficient and less error-prone in your work. Second, you'll reuse your code across tasks and you'll learn

Start by automating your tasks. First, you'll get more efficient and less error-prone in your work. Second, you'll reuse your code across tasks and you'll learn when it's a good time to refactor and generalize vs copy & paste. Third, you'll see how many times your programs misbehave, and you'll learn about fixing errors and writing tests. Everything can be learned in a course or on a book, but creating something that you really need and care about is the easiest way to get exposed to the details that matter. As for the question, I learned programming in Pascal at 12 so way over 20y ago. At the time I was playing a lot of role-play games and I wanted to automate "battles": rolling dies, looking up tables related to the damage inflicted, etc. I didn't have Internet, I learned from help and a manual.