Oh my gosh, that’s it! He’s trying to buy himself a friend!

I am a veteran programmer of >40 years and this is the right answer. Find a project that interests you, probably one tied to another of your hobbies, and just go at it. Don’t look to find if someone else has already done this project - they probably have and you’ll be discouraged from trying. Learn what you need as you need it; don’t try to “learn enough” to get started. It’s programming, you’ll never know enough. The best way to learn to program is to program.

Some personal examples: I write random generators for TTRPGs, I’m making a better UI for a cheap digital oscilloscope I bought for measuring audio equipment, I have a couple little wheeled robots I tinker on, I like to write MCP servers for LLM assistants, and I’ve got dozens of little projects or custom tools.

Go for it.

You can manage it from https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini

“How much DNA do salamanders absorb from the environment, and how much of that gets incorporated into their DNA?” I would assume.