My point was not that the material itself was difficult to learn, but that knowing which direction to go in, or knowing what material to learn, was the more difficult part.
But the coding bootcamp's curriculum and sequencing isn't necessarily superior. It could be as arbitrary or suboptimal as any low-rated 1-star book on Amazon.
A curious programmer would actually be skeptical that the bootcamp has the proven syllabus for learning.
Therefore, find a 5-star book on Javascript/Ruby on Amazon, and start with Ch 1. What evidence (not marketing materials) would the novice programmer see that makes the coding bootcamp's sequencing superior to that?
You get caught up in all the arguments about which language/framework/tech of the day is the best because you don't know any better. For example, my initial Google search led me to learn Haskell because it's "the best language", using Vim because it's "the best editor." Looking back that's silly and absurd, and most people would agree that's not a wise way to start (inb4 'Haskell is actually...') but I didn't know that then. You're flying completely blind.
Straight book-learning is not a fit for everyone.