How to start learning IT?

Question

IT education

Hello! I have a possibly trivial question that has been asked many times and probably annoys many. No, I don’t want to know if it’s too late to start coding at thirty, become a cool programmer and go to live in the USA, write shitty codes and earn millions ... I realized myself in another specialization, not related to IT, which suits me perfectly.

I just want to study the topic of IT and specifically programming for general development. For example, in order to be able to write free open-source programs for your own use, to understand more deeply how hardware works, how the Internet works, the difference between protocols and their use in different services. In general, more for the soul.

According to some manuals, I raised VPN on a rented VPS. Now I plan to raise a server for my cloud in NextCloud. Please direct me to the relevant literature. I suppose that everything related to VPS is not programming, but administration? What literature about Linux and administration can be read? I do everything according to the manuals, but these are just mechanical actions and I don’t quite understand the logic of the action when raising the same VPN. And I would like to understand more precisely - what functionality does a particular team have? Does it make sense to just take the reference book and experiment on some other "bare" server specially rented for these needs? Also, I would like, with an understanding of the processes taking place on the Internet, the design of its protocols and other things ... have some knowledge for practical application on information security. To be able to make the same servers safe from leakage, for example ...

No matter how trite and perhaps annoying it may sound to you - which language to start learning for the needs described in the second paragraph. I would like to write programs for both Android and Windows.

In general, I described more or less what I need ... but there is no understanding of how to approach the study of all this more structurally, without mess in my head. Perhaps it is worth starting with some basics, after which the study of aspects of interest would be more meaningful. Thanks a lot for the replies!

Answer 1

Start by solving one specific practical problem using one programming language.
It will take years to study what you have described.

Answer 2

To understand protocol networks and how the Internet works, I advise you to read Olifer, Olifer: Computer networks. or Kurose J., Ross K. - Computer networks. Top-down approach
If you need an understanding of how a particular service works and how to configure them, read books on server operating systems on Linux and Windows.

Answer 3

You can start here: stolyarov.info/books/programming_intro