I quit my job and learned to code over the last 8 months or so. The main thing- write code everyday. A little, a lot. Just start spinning that wheel. You'll learn a bit here and there. But the big advances come after a few weeks when you piece together the little concepts.

I started with Python & Google App Engine. I would recommend this to anyone. You don't have to worry about the server and can just pay attention to actually learning a server-side language (assuming that is what you want to focus on).

Check out http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index

O'Reilly books are excellent too. If you have any questions, my email is on my profile.

Don't stop - code every day!