The Bitcoin community needs coders/programmers/techies/hackers/etc more than miners and speculators.
Don't know anything about programming? That's OK!
Google to the rescue:
https://code.google.com/edu/courses.htmlThe majority of the bitcoin client is written in C++ however python and Java projects are also quite prevalent.
It's a billion degrees outside, so cool off in front of your computer fans and start learning to code!
As far as bitcoining goes, which of these courses on the google site would you suggest starting with so that the knowledge I'm learning is most conducive to the advancement of the bitcoin?
Chances are, you're a long way off from the level of C++ necessary to contribute to bitcoin itself, but you can help the community grow by contributing to or creating your own side projects. If you're interested in mining, most of the mining-centric stuff I see are Python scripts. If you're more interested in the commerce side of things, pick up HTML, CSS and the web language of your choice (ASP/PHP) and learn how to connect your scripts to bitcoind (there are excellent premade libraries in both) or just how to decode JSON data from Mt Gox et. al. and run some kind of info service.
Lots of options with any language you pick, but those are probably the big ones.
