how do I start programming for ubuntu?

Depends on the language you want to use but a starting point would be to install the "build-essential" package. Try the command "sudo apt-get install build-essential" from terminal or find it in Ubuntu Software Senter. Then you can start by reading these web pages:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Programming
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PowerUsersProgramming

I see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Programming has tons of links,

I would like to see the steps to an easy or test request/defect which can be fixed very easily (like just changing a word/variable)

Once I do that easy fix, I can start checking more complicated defects/requests.

Is my request above a realistic one or is it totally an out of the scope?

Learning to program takes more than a post here to get you started. The above links are merely some guidelines to get you started. I can help you a bit if you tell me the programming language you are interested in.

Python

A simple "Hello World" file for python can be the following:

Paste the following code in gedit, vim or any other editor of your choice:

  #!/usr/bin/env python
  print "Hello World!"

and save it as hello.py

Open terminal and cd to the directory you saved it

  cd arena

make it executable

  chmod +x hello.py

Run it:

  ./hello.py

This is just to get you started. To learn more about python download the "pyhton-doc" package:

  sudo apt-get install python-doc

And then paste the following URI to your browser:

  /usr/share/doc/python-doc/html/index.html

Happy reading!

aser@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ chmod +x hello.py
aser@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ ./hello.py
Warning: unknown mime-type for "Hello World!" -- using "application/octet-stream"
Error: no such file "Hello World!"
aser@ubuntu:~/Desktop$

Make sure you don't have any spaces in front of the #! (aka shebang) sequence in the first line.