see:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
You'll need to know shell scripting e.g "bash" programming, then maybe "sed" and "awk".
You'll have access to other languages too such a perl, php, python, ruby, lisp, C (in which most of linux is written), g++ and for number theorists pari/gp and gmp -- and much more!
Editors: nano, gedit (which has code pages -- colours), emacs and "vi" and many others!
HTH
Just ask!