"Programming" itself is not the hard part or really what you should worry about, and by that I mean syntax and grammer. What really matters is knowing how to so

"Programming" itself is not the hard part or really what you should worry about, and by that I mean syntax and grammer. What really matters is knowing how to solve problems through programming. To get that knowledge you have to write programs and solve the problems that present themselves. It sounds like you can take your time, so I'd say just write something, maybe a small website in python or a cli-tool, and then when you come across something that gives you problems ( HTTP Caching, or building node trees ), study up on it and then implement it. Don't worry about learning the right tools, just build things and find the tools - programming language(s) - that gets the job done the best for you :) Also a note, reading source code is a great way to find out how the experts get the job done, so you can always learn from them by perusing github or a GNU project :)