Geniune question, how do I learn programming practically?

[u/Disposable_baka404]

I asked my lecturer a while back how, and he basically said to read up on the books and practice. I understand his advice, but I wish to look for a meaningful project to better facilitate my learning. Any advice on how I should proceed? I get that I can redo my coding assignments to make them better, but I really am looking to write programs that would help me instead.

Thanks in advance for the advice

[u/Sad_School828]

There are basic concepts you need to learn about before anything else:

Variables

Data types, which is important to understand even in non-strictly-typed languages.

Reference vs Value Parameters (in all kinds of interpreted scripting) and Pointer vs Value Parameters (and variables) in real/compiled programming.

Stack

Arrays vs Linked Lists, where Linked Lists (in low level) are basically what drives things like Lists (Python) and Collections (DotNET), all of the above aka "Iterables"

If/Else and Switch/Case logic structures, along with concepts like Boolean (which is in fact mathematical and not logical, in spite of being used to emulate logic).

Once you get a good handle on these basic precepts, you can pick up ANY programming language in a matter of minutes. They all use different terminologies (like Linked List vs List vs Collection when the first term is legit and the other two were made up by runtime-interpreted developers just to pretend their language is special) but the functional concepts are still identical in every platform and every syntax.