As a professional computer programmer, let me weigh in:

I spent 2 years during high school learning to program after school. I started consulting part time during my freshman year of college for a local programming consulting shop. The first year or two at that job I knew very little (looking back on things now), struggling to learn the trade. I'm glad my employers were OK with that.

Fast forward 4 years, and I started my own consultancy business out of college. Doing computer programming consultancy is hard: in addition to having technical chops you also have to do project management, manage cash flow, deal with clients who fight you about money, know basic accounting, you name it. In my own practice there were a lot of years that were "famine" years, and only a few that were "feast" years.

So maybe you think that you can get a job as a programmer with a startup, because startups are what everyone thinks about now. In my experience you need two things going for you to get a job at a startup: 1) living in SF or NYC and 2) having 2-3 years of professional experience in their language of choice. If you don't have both of those things the pickings are pretty slim.

The thing about startups is because the team size is so small they can't (or don't think they can) deal with bringing on a newbie programmer and the slower output they will have.

Please don't do DevBootcamp or CodeAcademy and think that you can put our your consultancy shingle, working for clients directly. If you really want to go that route find a more experienced freelancer to subcontract with for a year or two, and learn from them.

In one way, the world of web development is easier than the programming world I grew up in (writing C and C++ programs for desktop computers), and perhaps with laser focus on web development you could be a good developer in 6 months. HungryAcademy thinks it can train people to do that, and I have seen amazingly talented people go far with very little (comparatively) training. Then again, there's at least 4 languages to any moderately complex website (CSS, HTML, JS, and a server-side language), so there's a lot to cover.

But certainly it's not a matter of just picking up "Learn Web Development in 24 hours" and a day later being able to charge clients $100/hour for websites. Your looking at half a year at least, if not 2 years at least before companies take you seriously. And probably 3 or 4 years before you really should be taking on clients yourself.

So sure -- certainly if your unemployeed and looking to get an edge up and make a long-term investment in yourself (or just learn something fun!) maybe spending 10-30 hours a week learning programming (between job searching) is a good idea. Maybe in 6-12 months you can make something interesting that people like or think shows enough potential that they're willing to take a chance on you. But it's not a panacea.