I am not sure why networking and could computing is in this thread. This is certainly the last thing you want to try or use (except for Internet access and all its learning resources) when learning to program. And it won't let you become as familiar with common computers logic as programming, say, a Tetris.
It depends on what your objective is and what you're trying to accomplish.
For a lot of people trying to just accomplish some specific goal, learning to program in C (as per the article) is probably not the best approach unless they're into OS kernels or embedded programming. Instead, they might well be better off stitching together some cloud services of various types. Not everyone has as an objective passing a leetcode whiteboarding interview at some ad tech company.
