Just like you might learn to play the guitar in 4 months. Depending on your goal, in 4 months you can become a novice programmer who could be hired by a compan

Just like you might learn to play the guitar in 4 months. Depending on your goal, in 4 months you can become a novice programmer who could be hired by a company to grow into a junior position.* You could spend the same amount of time to solve a problem that is meaningful to you and in doing so try to learn all the programming you need to know. It would be helpful to have a mentor of sorts, though. This approach is often taken by domain experts who have a problem, but are unable to get a solution due to bureaucracy, lack of funds, or there just is no suitable solution yet. The resulting programs might not be the best, from a programming point of view, but the value added is often very high. * It is actually not quite clear what a junior programmer is or should be able to do. This depends on the expectations of the organization as well as their willingness to train good people. Usually organizations are looking for people who know enough to be productive fast without too much supervision, whereas novice programmers often need more one-on-one attention than organizations are willing to invest. As a result, novices are thrown in the deep end of the pool and those who can swim to the other end of the pool during their probation period are kept, the others are left to drown.