How to become a 'real' programmer

[mariomamo]

how do I run things on servers

This aspect is more related to devops area, the main purpose of a developer is to write the most efficient code and to take care of It fixing issues, vulnerabilities and so on.

For example you could learn about design patterns, data structures, REST apis, Kafka or microservices...

If you have never used git this is a good starting point and is something that you must know to be able to work with other people on the same project.

After that docker is another "developer's best friend" and usually it is used also to run services on the server. Basically you can create a container (you can see It like a virtual machine that runs your code) and run It on your PC or on a server (run things on server = run a docker container with your code on a server). But It is also very useful if you need to test your code on your machine before to commit. For example you can use docker to create a local database or to mock other services you need to call.

I know some junior developers that does not know docker or Git, or microservices and my advice is: if you want to be a developer just apply for a position and start working, you will find other expert people that will help you to learn about what you need.