Your enthusiasm as great. But be aware by saying you think this is something you can do in a week you are telling the world you think programming is a semi-skilled job.
I learned to weld when I was 7. I can make art or patch up a broken plow. A real welder can make a boat because all his seams are water tight, and cam patch body work because his seams are so smooth. 27 years of welding as a hobby or for bits of maintenance and I am not a welder.
I don't think we need to be so inflexible about language -- there are plenty of people in the world who would like to pay someone to make straightforward websites (patching up broken plows?) rather than work on, say, a new in-kernel memory allocator (building a boat?). It would be pretty ridiculous to claim you have to be able to do the latter before you get to call yourself a programmer.
I think the truth is that programming is a field with work available for people of disparate skill levels and experience -- http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/james-somers-web... is a good article explaining some of why that is. It describes a friend of the author who went from being a law student to being a programmer with an $85k/year salary in six months; does that make programming semi-skilled? Where's the boundary?
"Learn to program" doesn't necessarily mean "learn in a week to be a programming rockstar" (one of our favorites). If you're a smart person, you can pick up the basics of syntax, conditionals, simple methods. You can learn enough to bootstrap your way through a simple CRUD app. Hell, that's exactly what I did and now I'm being paid to do it.
I started programming (professionally) this year after transitioning from a completely different career. I lucked into my current gig by basically impressing my future employer with enthusiasm for programming. I also am kind of a rarity, as there are probably less than a handful of professional programmers in my rural Texas town of 15k people, and seemingly no one else was interested in Rails. So I've gone from Michael Hartl's tutorial to an actual job with customers in less than a year, without a CS degree or anything like that.
I honestly think the best way to learn programming is to make yourself by having a project. I'd been dabbling in online courses for a year and a half beforehand, but I don't think I learned much until I had a customer that said "I want something that does this, can you do it?", and just having to figure it out.
Your excitement and story are really compelling! It's wonderful seeing someone adopt a new passion. There are so many benevolent people willing to root for you if you show them who to root for. I wish you luck on your journey! You're off to an amazing start.
Good luck with it! Portland's a great place to be learning. I don't want to imply that women have to learn programming in women-centric spaces, but I bet you might enjoy checking out PyLadies and Flux too if you haven't yet:
I understand your problems with finding jobs in the German-speaking countries without having great language skills. I once naively started a Master in Banking and Finance at the University of St Gallen (20 min by train from Zurich). Came home within a few months as my language skills were nonexistent, at the time hiring banks were looking for native German speakers with English fluency and at least one other European language. That was a few years ago, and soon after I began my adventure learning programming.
Best decision I ever made, and I'm shocked I didn't get into programming earlier. I can't imagine returning to corporate finance or accounting type jobs -- and hope my programming skills prevent me from ever needing to.
Quote: "I’m really excited about coding. There are so many cool things happening in tech, and I love the idea of being able to work with smart people no matter where I am. My goal is to learn enough to be able to find a job that would allow me to reunite with my love in Zurich… but the journey there suddenly seems really fun, too."
I should tell you that if you actually become a programmer, in the real sense of that expression, your priorities will completely change and your goal will become more programming, not more relationships.
For a normal person, programming is a means to an end, which is meaningful relationships. For a programmer, relationships are a means to an end, which is meaningful programming.
ha! I hope there's enough room for dedication to both in the future. He also loves programming, so maybe he'll understand my love affair when I start moving in that direction!
I learned to weld when I was 7. I can make art or patch up a broken plow. A real welder can make a boat because all his seams are water tight, and cam patch body work because his seams are so smooth. 27 years of welding as a hobby or for bits of maintenance and I am not a welder.