If you can choose still, study something that is related to laboratory work rather than programming, because anyone can buy a laptop and learn to program, but a

If you can choose still, study something that is related to laboratory work rather than programming, because anyone can buy a laptop and learn to program, but almost no one can access a lab. If you can only program, first choose an application that you are passionate about, that is new, hard and important, and then learn whatever you need to achieve that goal. Application first, method later. After that, if you still want to learn low level programming... :-) use emulators + minimal examples like in my tutorials, read / step debug the source of major projects and document that somewhere, and then try to modify those major projects with useful extensions.