Let's start with the Newbie corner (I'm a newbie, who would have guessed): I just find those forums that have a Newbie Corner (sometimes introduce yourself) very approachable. Not only does it help to break the anonymity barrier, and thus makes us all more social beings (instead of just posting tech stuff / bugs to strangers), but more importantly (to me), also gives a place to give positive feedback. Because it's that what makes people come here, hopefully.

So some of that: I came here from Budgie Ubuntu (after Elementary and Cinnamon Gnome,xfc and budgie). I have sold my macbook, bought an Acer Swift 5 (recommended), and am learning Linux. Coming from Mac i appreciate attention to detail and coherence, which initially attracted me to Elementary. But Budgie has it all the same, and is not so limiting as Elementary, so well done guys.
Once on Budgie, i used Ubuntu's version, because everything seemed Ubuntu based anyway (newbie perspective). But since learning that it was a Solus project and seeing some very positive reviews i thought if the desktop is anything to judge by, it should be good. And it is!!
I really admire the courage (or is it almost audacity) to start an independent distribution so late in the game. Hat off.

Ok that just ended up here, but the reason i put this post in the docs section was that i didn't find developer docs. There are very good user docs, and this forum looks nice. But as a developer i might want to get my feet wet (or even just compile random stuff) and there is not such a nice Started Doc as for many other things.
Specifically: i tried installing gcc, binutil and things i needed from software center, but never got that to work (cpp was in the wrong place). Then in a forum thread i found the system.devel package mentioned and that did the trick. So my suggestion would be to put installation of that into a doc, and maybe throw some stuff in as to how to start with developing an applet or change the desktop code.

Ok, mosty thanks guys,
Torsten

As far as i know, development for solus/budgie is mostly c/c++/vala/GTK.
I'm also pretty new to linux and not a developer myself(Maybe in the future 😉 ), so i cant help you with how to set up your system for development, but
I can refer you to this:
https://discuss.getsol.us/d/155-looking-for-advice-on-making-a-budgie-addon
and in this thread I also linked to a tutorial on how to start development with Vala+GTK.
Hope it helps.

As a general rule, the worst thing from a developer/sys-admin perspective is writing documentation. So, I would imagine that mentality (of which I have shared) is probably more than anything why you aren't finding the coding info you were seeking. We'd rather be doing fun stuff, let someone else write the documents (been there).
Solus is a friendly place (the forums), so ask questions, you'll probably get answers. As a general rule, we'll all appreciate that you did research before asking (which it seems you do).
Frankly, I'm in the same position, I keep thinking the world would be better if we had a weather applet that worked, and I keep thinking I could probably write one. But I feel I have too many feet in the fire already (maintaining household, writing, reading) and learning how to code in a new language sounds daunting and time-consuming.

    A bit of C,C++, (educationally) Pascal, Basic (pre-college), PHP, Perl, shell scripting.
    I spent my working life mainly being a sysadmin type, with bits of programming needed here and there.

    I came here after trying Elementary OS on my laptop (Lenovo B40-70) on the start of this year. Prior to that, I was really curious about Linux after watching a Linus Tech Tips video about Linux Gaming.
    I thought to myself that I should also use GNU/Linux on my main pc since Windows 10 have privacy issues and whatnot. Also, because I was impressed on how much modularity and freedom you have on a Linux based OS. I'm switching from proprietary software like Microsoft Office, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Davinci Resolve, and Fusion, all of which I use occassionally not for professional uses so it's not that hard.
    So I installed Solus a week or two ago and it's pretty fun. There's more customizability than ElementaryOS and it also has a cool sidebar. With some simple feature that is unfortunately lacking like icon scaling on dock. Also, glad that Wacom Tablet worked out of the box.
    I'm just starting to learn python and wanted to get my feet wet in making simple software in the future after I understand python.

    @maor26 thanks for the link. I can probably still read c/c++ and get back into it (and pick up vala), but what i am missing is how to compile one of those applets. That cpu stuff was exactly what i was looking for. It somehow came preinstalled on Ubuntu Budgie. But i'll read more, and @dbarron, where would i ask more about the basics?

      If you mean Solus specific, then umm I would assume you would need to open a conversational line with an active developer. If you mean learning a language, probably buy a book for it.

      what i am missing is how to compile one of those applets

      They all come with meson or autotools which are standard. You won't have to search a long time to find tutorials & examples.

      rubydesign Btw, i'm sure that if you have a specific solus related dev question, you'll be able to find help
      from one of the developers on IRC in the solus dev channel #Solus-Dev or ask here in the forums.

        a year later

        Hello there!
        I'm pharmacist, beekeeper and Linux enthusiast from Serbia. My hoby is php programming and recently I started reading on python. I have been in Gnu Linux world since 2011 when I installed Ubuntu and never went back to Windows.
        I have been running Ubuntu for years, fearing that installing other distros will take me out of my comfort zone. I had little advanture with Arch Linux few years ago and remember that I had hard time installing it, but I did it with help of my friend who had big experience with many linux distributions. I got back to Ubuntu very fast.
        So as time went by I became relaxed with Linux, curious and started to watch youtube videos about other distros and reading comments about users experinces and decided that it is time to try PopOS. It was about a month ago. I figured it was trimed Ubuntu with makeup and continued to search for my new distro.
        I found Solus and Manjaro and saw that Manjaro came from Arch Linux and that it has very popular rating and not so big but dedicated community and I installed it.
        So few days ago I decided to hopp from Manjaro and test Solus for a while. I didn't have any issues or other complaints but just wanted to see if Solus is as good and stable as people are talking about on youtube, forums and blogs. So far, I'm impressed with overall perfomance and little concerned with offer of apps compared to Manjaro or Ubuntu. Also, I didn't find the way to set same wallpaper on desktop, lockscreen and greeter. It would be nice to have that option. I remember that there's application for Gnome called Loginized which would do that, but I can't find it here on Solus.
        I'll stick around for a while and see if it's Solus or Manjaro for me.