How to start in IT, specially programming

I often see people asking me in forums, groups, and even onsite what they should do to start programming, so I resolved to write this post. Before anything, I like to say clearly that the tips/information here may not match your reality, and they are based on some research that I made and on my experiences.

That being said, in programming, we have many areas that we can follow, such as:

Frontend: build website interfaces using HTML, CSS, and Javascript;
Backend: work on the server side ensuring the system/website works the way it should, saving, updating, deleting, and getting the data from the database or another server. Many tools can be used to do that like PHP, Java, C#, Node.js, Ruby, Go, etc;
Mobile: build apps for cellphones, can be a specialist on Android with Java/Kotlin, IOs with Swift, or with hybrid platforms like Flutter and React Native;
Fullstack: Frontend + Backend, in some cases +Mobile too;
DevOps: make scripts to deliver mobile apps (PlayStore/AppleStore) or the Backend/Frontend;
Fullcycle: Fullstack + DevOps;
Data analyst: interpret the data, analyse the results, and use statistics methods;
Data scientist: collects, organizes, and analyzes the data to get insights and information for the company;
Machine/Deep learning: research, develop, and model the artificial intelligence responsible for machine learning;
Big Data: model, build, test, and maintain the data processing systems that work with a big amount of data;

For the areas of Data analysis, Data Science, Machine/Deep learning, and Big data the most used technology is Python.