New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to get started with serious programming as a math liker?

Ask HN: How to get started with serious programming as a math liker?
5 by optbuild | 5 comments on Hacker News.
I like math and can read and do elementary proofs. If required I can learn more of math because that interests me. I want to become a hacker kind of programmer. By hacker I mean someone who can build stuff. Not always the perfect and best possible stuff, but, stuff that works good enough. By that I don't imply that I lean towards messy programming sphagetti style over good readable and modifiable code. One advice I hear all the time is get to building stuff. But before building I need to know the bare minimum, otherwise there will be huge gaps and misconceptions in my mental space. So my questions are: 1. From where do I learn the bare minimum? MOOCs, books, etc? Any suggestions? 2. I believe in building tiny projects. Lots of them to gain confidence so that I can take over bigger ones later. What type of things can I build? Is there a list? Again, suggestions. I wonder in awe how people go like - "I need to accomplish this job. Let me think about it. Ok so now let me code up a small tool that does the job for me". How to achieve this level, where the ideas don't get bottlenecked due to my inability to think what can be achieved using a programming language and how to achieve that?