Another vote for Arduino, especially if you're coming from the world of software. Your first project will be to make an LED blink, but to do that properly you

Another vote for Arduino, especially if you're coming from the world of software. Your first project will be to make an LED blink, but to do that properly you need to use Ohm's Law (or else you'll forget the resistor and burn something up). Then you'll make the LED change state based on a button press, which will teach you about pull-up resistors. Eventually you'll add a modern version of a 7400 IC or two. You'll try powering too many components (likely more LEDs), and you'll discover why decoupling capacitors matter. You might even mess with a MOSFET. By this point you're a competent novice in digital electronics, and you're likely ready to start learning some of the fundamentals of analog electronics. But along the way it felt like you were just doing a bit more with software, so it was a really easy learning curve.