Mikeie Reiland is a staff writer for Education at Forbes Advisor. Before coming to Forbes Advisor, he wrote magazine journalism for publications like the Oxford American, Bitter Southerner, and Gravy.

Ubuntu is a free computer system, like Windows or macOS, but it’s built by a community. It’s great for programmers because it’s very flexible and has lots of tools already built-in that help you code.

Python is well known as one of the most beginner-friendly and flexible programming languages. But while Python has a fantastic onboarding experience for even the least experienced new programmers, it ...