[greenpinguin]

When I started off there was something really gratifying when doing a static web page front end. You get immediately rewarded when throwing in an img tag and setting some basic CSS (if you start from nothing, it's really nice to get visual feedback). But soon after I wanted to get into 'real' coding and got interested in TDD, and finding elegant solutions for problems be it backend or a complicated UI. If you can spark that kind of motivation I'd say your friend is good to go. I'm also working on a program that I'm basing on my experience of teaching myself how to code: http://archi2tech.com/ maybe your friend is interested ;)