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He started with some really basic books, but he switched to Codecademy some weeks ago and he really likes it!
Good luck! :)
Bloc offers a 12-week intensive online course: https://www.bloc.io/
The idea is basically to give you "minimum viable training", so that you can see whether a programming career is right for you, and then get paid to learn more while providing a valuable service to your employer.
I think Dev Bootcamp pioneered these "bootcamp"-style courses, but there are several of them now, and I've heard good things about them. Just make sure you do your due diligence, since with the recent media coverage, there are bound to be a few phoney scams trying to exploit people like you.
EDIT: Also, these courses are fairly new, and almost nobody in the industry has any experience with this style of teaching, except for the people closely involved with it. Most programmers will be useful sources of information about the things you need to know that these courses won't teach you, but we probably don't have a clue about the effectiveness of these courses. Take our opinions with a grain of salt.
The most crucial thing when learning programming languages is to have a very short feedback loop: build something in that language as soon as you know just enough to get by. The rest can be learned "just in time".
Go for it and good luck!
consistent learning every few days for a few months will set you to mastery in a year or so. good luck with learning!
Particularly the Wordpress advice. Wordpress is a good example of something where someone with no programming ability at all, but an interest in technical work, can gain some (marketable!) skills, and then segway into actual coding experience (PHP in this case).
But the short answer is, there has never been a better time when software development was more accessible to learn, or more useful and marketable, and both of those needles are moving in directions favorable to your interests!
All the while look for something simple you can write that would help you at your current unrelated career. Even as simple as a "to-do list for accountants". Put it on Github.
Email me if you have questions or want to pair program. I'm in my 30s so I'm all about teaming up with other Gen Xers and showing these youngsters a thing or two ;)