I suppose that it's probably a lot different for programmers who didn't start programming on their own - those whose first exposure to coding some software was

I suppose that it's probably a lot different for programmers who didn't start programming on their own - those whose first exposure to coding some software was through classes in college or whatnot. I know that for me, almost all of my knowledge of software development and knowledge about what tools are available on a linux system, and how they work (as well as about how the kernel works) came from this process of poking around, reading what was available to me, and then trying things out.