The best way to try Linux out is booting a LiveCD with some desired Linux distro. That way you can try it out without installing anything to your hard drive and you don't need to re-install OS X if you change your mind.

Why Linux? Freedom.

In your case, if you want to learn more about computers and programming you may experience propriertary systems such as OS X being a kludgy enviroment for that purpose. From my experience, one month using Arch Linux taught me much more than half a year using OS X,