[Tozen]

I disagree that it would necessarily take that long. Per the OP, his father is not starting from scratch, and has some programming in his background. Being a CEO, CCO, etc... We can assume his father is an intelligent and successful person.

Possibly, if his father applied himself, he could find himself a niche in which he would be adequately competent within 2 years. To include being a freelancer or independent developer.

As you alluded to, because of his father's business background, he might do really well in sales for a software related company or starting his own business.

[pcthrowaway]

I know the OP said it was "maybe Pascal or Basic", but having done this ~40 years ago, I'd argue that it is basically starting from scratch, unless he was actually writing Javascript the whole time for google sheets integrations

> Being a CEO, CCO, etc... We can assume his father is an intelligent and successful person.

Being unable to continue working as a CEO/CCO suggests he's not currently very successful, and to put it lightly, CEO "intelligence" (whatever that means) doesn't necessarily translate to the kind of intelligence necessary for software engineering