It's all about what the needs and expectations of the individual is - and properly setting them. As one of the founders of http://codeacademy.org I can say first-hand that it is possible to get people to a point where they are happy with their progress. But rather than asserting - our students' own perspectives is the actual evidence: http://codeacademy.org/culture

If anyone would like to know more about our experience starting and running this program - I'd love to help you however I can. It's great that there are so many people getting passionate about the issue of educating more people on how to solve problems through software.

Drop me a line at neal at codeacademy dot org.