If you're interested in learning about computer programming, start small. By the time you've mastered the art of manipulating the GNU Bourne-Again Shell, you should know if programming is really something that you want to do. Bash has a reputation for being simple enough so that even new users can understand it in minutes. This is most likely the reason that all of the major Linux distributions offer bash as the default shell. Learning the basics of bash can take a few minutes of your time, but you can do so much more to this shell than print a directory or process list.
Bash is manipulated via the use of scripts.
As you might expect in showbiz, scripts are a set of instructions that tells bash what it should do. You'll start out with a traditional script that's a popular example for every first effort in programming. Once you've mastered the basics, it's on to the next section to learn all about file descriptors and how they will work in your scripts to redirect output to files and other services on your Linux computer. These pipes let you use the output of a program as the input of another one. Make your way through the rest of the basic sections, learning about variables, loops, and functions.