The skills involved with software development don't have to be black magic. There are several great services that have launched in the past year to help individuals start to work with code, and to work on their programming skills. Learning to program is like learning a spoken language in that doing so has a lot of secondary benefits beyond the direct skill. Programmers have a well developed ability to create mental models for new ideas. They are able to adapt to change more quickly, and can develop a consistent logical framework for thinking about the world or a specific situation.

Codeacademy

Codeacademy.com has one of the best training programs anywhere for people who want to learn coding. In my experience, tools like this are in many ways superior to formal training or education. While formal training or schooling can give you a lot of the theory, background, and context, services like Codeacademy focus the user on writing code and solving problems. This real-world style experience where you aren't answering questions, but actually writing programs that are being run is a great way to experience not only the fundamentals, but also the power of a programming language.

When I first learned programming, whenever I encountered a new language's Hello World, I always got a smug feeling of satisfaction from the fact that instead of printing "Hello World", I would write a personalized message like "Bonjour Monde" or "Sup world?". This isn't a major feature that people typically discuss, but the ability for learners to deviate from the course in ways that they find interesting is critical in my opinion to the development of these types of creative skills.

Codeacademy has a decent variety of modern languages. Their most developed content is around javascript, which runs natively in your browser, and Python, which they have hooked up to a server based interpreter. Each course will take you through the entire process of developing an application, from flow control, to variables and math, to functions, classes and higher level concepts. The repetition of syntax can be helpful for experienced programmers learning a new language, but building yet another factorial method can be a little frustrating.