Re: orizuzu’s comment on python. I’m just starting out too and I’ve really enjoyed Automate the Boring Stuff. I have the course on Udemy, but he’s got the first chunk of it on YouTube if you want to try it out first. There is an accompanying book but I haven’t dived into it, just watching the videos for now. He does a good job of explaining concepts through simple examples that you can type out along with him, which he recommends. Good luck!

It's really hard to recommend something without knowing what you're interested in. And you only know what you're interested in once you start exploring.

IT is really vast, and some positions do not require a lot of proper programming (besides some system scripts). My advice is to explore a lot of things, and narrow it down later down the line.

With that in mind, if you never programmed before, I would recommend starting with python. It's easy to learn, there are a ton of resources out there, and it's almost the "lingua franca" in a lot of areas (since it's so popular). I'd say most developers these days are at least familiar with python, so that gives you a lot of options of people you can work with.

The fact that it's so popular also means that whatever sub-problem you're trying to solve, most likely there's already a python library that does it, or some library written in another language that also includes python bindings.

Can't recommend a specific book (since I've learn it a long time ago), I'd start by searching "best python resources site:reddit.com", and go from there.

EDIT: apparently python can now be used inside Microsoft Excel. This might unlock some entry level positions to automate the admin workflow of a lot of companies (a lot of them heavily rely on Excel).