But somehow I want to be part of this community. What value can someone like me add to the hacker economy if I don't know how to program?
I am a Fortran programmer primarily, and most Fortran compilers are written in C. When I encounter bugs I report them at the Intel Fortran forum, GitLab (for LFortran) and bugzilla (for gfortran). So you can contribute to a project written in X without knowing X.
Sarcasm, up there. I don’t actually believe that quote, but it fits in this context.
Write documentation, write blog posts, make videos about concepts or tools that interest you (enthusiasm is contagious), as you learn them.
Make them for any skill level you feel comfortable with.
I pointed it out in the course forum, but they really seem to not care.
I also noticed this with Common Lisp. It seems absolutely everybody learning Lisp thinks they have so much to offer, they fill Google's search algo up with their "tutorials." But they're all traceable to the source they mangled in trying to make it appear original, and they get ridden with wrong descriptions, etc on top of that.
That, to my mind, is one of modern Lisp's biggest downfalls - 90% of the resources Google will find for you are utter crap. Don't get me started on "Quantum Lisp" because I ended up working for one such shyster for a week before I realized he was hoping I might be able to provide him some legitimacy. He really had none, and was duping everyone around him. Eventually he and his business were escorted out of the building by police, although I was long gone by then and don't know the story behind that one.
Just because you're currently learning something, does not mean you should be writing a tutorial or pretending you are a resource for others.
So I'd say, contribute perspective. Contribute ideas and ways of thinking that wouldn't occur to me.