A steady job is a very good idea (depending on who you ask). I just didn't want to make the assumption that he has a large enough skill set for a regular programming job.
The cool thing is, he could back into a programming job. Intern, QA, semi-technical gopher, job got through a friend, whatever. He seems to have some chops. If he's there for M months, and moves himself into a programming job for N months, he gets to say on his resume:
I may very well have enough experience for a steady coding job, as I have had an entry level coding job before. But, there were never a lot of coding jobs in my area, and even less so since the recession came in.