In every single one of the "how I learned to program in X days" stories, the author had some previous experience. I wouldn't count running a BBS and learning 3 programming languages as "no previous experience".
Learning any programming language, especially as a youth, puts you in a completely different class from someone who has no prior exposure to computer programming and its core concepts.
Knowing what a for loop is already puts you miles ahead of the pack. It implies knowledge of variables, counters, operators, etc. We take many concepts for granted that are not that obvious to most.
Learning django was, I assume from reading the article, a way to build fun projects with the knowledge of python he had acquired.
Learn a language then how to make web pages with it is a better way to go in my view.
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may be the times have changed and thats not true any more ..