Ask HN: From zero to IT career, what is the fastest path?

Dear HNers, I've two friends of mine that are not happy with the economic issues here in Europe and struggle to find a decent source of income. Both are very smart, and I suggested them to turn into programmers, which is one of the jobs that still is able to make you pay your bills easily.

However they are one ~30, with previous experiences of coding only at hobby level (C course, but he has the ability to translate ideas into C easily) and one ~40 years old (which used to be a PHP programmer, but is not doing serious/complex stuff for years at this point).

What is the simplest way for them to learn something that will bring a job ASAP? For example Android development? Node.js? Ideally this should combine a reasonable learning curve, the ability to work without knowing the whole computer science stuff, but just specializing into something, and should be a currently very requested technology.

Thank you a lot for any reply!

EDIT: I forgot to say that one has knowledges about Digital Signal Processing (in the field of music), and one is fluent with HTML/CSS (but not Javascript).

EDIT2: Thanks a lot for all the replies! This is very helpful.

I have worked as a tech support guy for PHP-based apps for ~6 years. Pretty shitty schedule and pay.

Then I finished all Ruby and Rails courses on CodeSchool. Then practiced myself, using mostly Google for info. This allowed me to apply to a Rails company as a junior developer. I got hired and trained. I love it.

The quickest path to 'a job' is via operations. Sysadmin positions generally dont require CS degrees. Hobbyists will have enough general knowledge to useful with a fairly small amount of training.

I would suggest for someone with previous exposure to web development and some design flair: learn Javascript. There are great boot-camps available and if front-end UX/design isn't in their interests they can fall back to Node.js

An alternative might be Python. It's an easier language to learn than Javascript since there are fewer "features" one must learn to avoid. It's also rather prevalent in the web development space. And the bonus is that if, later on, they want to transition to another area of expertise there are fields such as scientific and cloud computing that use Python rather extensively.

If the other friend is fluent in DSP and has some exposure to C I would suggest staying on that tack... take a refresher course in C and possibly pick up a scripting language like Python on the side. Check out Art & Logic: they hire remote developers and work with many clients on DSP-related projects.

My #1 advice is to start by making your own job. This can mean bootstrapping a simple app, grinding away at building wordpress themes, or making paid programming tutorials.

This might not be the popular advice, but it's coming from a self-taught developer that now has > 10 years professional experience.