Welcome to the Emu!
You can help out a ton even without programming skills. There's a big need for testers right now to try things on Nova before they go to Basilisk (for more testing!) Check out the development forums https://www.swgemu.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9
You may also be interested in checking out the server discussion forums https://www.swgemu.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=195 and the Introductions https://www.swgemu.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=71. A lot of people here are really helpful towards new players, if you look/ask around here on the forums I'm sure you can find the people giving out armor and swoops to new players :-)
I did also mention looking for more lairs in other areas as well as static spawns. I just finished up leveling master brawler outside of Coronet and most of it was done by finding random lairs while heading to missions (at least twice as many random lairs as mission lairs).
Check out this list of POIs that have been populated with their spawns https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79815 . A ton of them are on Nova and need testing, once they are ready they will be merged to Basilisk and probably a lot sooner than a year or two ;-)
Edit: Oh, and missions should be worth a lot more than 200 xp, make sure you are getting in a group to get missions that are more difficult.