I develop software for a living, and I dare say I'm better than most at it. I've been doing it about 20 years, since I was writing Z80 assembly as a middle schooler [1]. It would take a lot more than a year for someone to learn to do my job. But I'm a lead engineer, not an entry level developer.

However, it would take less than the total amount of time I've been building software to do what I do, because my path to my job took me through all sorts of software development I don't do anymore. That includes 8 years of higher ed, of which I apply only a tiny fraction on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade all that education for the world. I draw upon it in plenty of indirect ways. I just know there are more direct routes for someone who simply wants to become an application developer.

I know this, because I know plenty of people who have taken less than a year to get into the industry, and are now productive developers. One of my friends even wrote about how he did it in detail [2]. There's a fantastic episode of Software Engineering Daily interviewing a guy who landed a lucrative job at AirBnB little more than a year after doing a dev bootcamp [3]. My own brother has been in the industry less than a year after coming through General Assembly and is doing quite well. I interview people all the time who have similar stories. They're not unicorns.

Developing software isn't easy. But it's also not that hard. At least the sort of software most of us build. You only need a couple people at the typical enterprise who are capable of doing architecture and the most technically intense stuff.

[1] http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/61/6175.html

[2] http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-yea...

[3] http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/07/11/salary-negoti...