Begging is unseemly, and the whole "you can be a programmer in 3 months just give me $12k" thing is also kind of uncool.
It's great that you were able to do that, and it grew up doing this work myself in a time in which you didn't have a lot of options BUT to be self taught. But I know I certainly would have benefitted from a program like this 15-20 years ago, when I learned a lot of things the hard way and much more slowly.,
every candidate I talk to about this gets the same spiel: you don't have to pay to learn this material. It's available online for free. But learning in a guided way will get you over the speed bumps a lot faster.. moreover, the best value from these programs isn't even the education: it's the network. Connecting with peers, mentors, and instructors is a benefit that pays dividends throughout a career, and this is often something students are completely up equipped to achieve on their own.
It could be that they love programming but they learn best in the competitive interactive environment offered by a place like The Flatiron School. There is more than one way to learn programming and the ways are not hierarchical, one may work best for one person, but would fail miserably for another.
I definitely do not want to come off as begging. I am offering design services to secure some money for her tuition, and she is sewing some things to sell on Etsy to raise money as well. Donations are for those with hearts of gold.
She has heard some good things about The Flatiron School. It's actually closer to a full-time job, rather than just a class.
I laid out a self-study plan above that worked great for me, it's all common sense and its mostly free. Now if she's not skilled enough to put the pieces together with the resources I mentioned then I'm very skeptical that working super duper hard for a few months (even with great mentors) would get her up to speed. That's not how learning software development works. Your brain is not built that way. LOL "hacker schools"
I think if you actually read what I linked, you would understand the situation a little more.
Naturally, as with all things HN, there is an insinuation that anyone who is incapable of doing things the way an intellectually-advanced-but-socially-deficient 17 y/o boy would, must not be intelligent.
No, that's not true at all. The resources are out there and he's already said she's got a passion and talent for programming. You can take an iOS class from Stanford for free on iTunes U from a brilliant teacher who used to be a VP at NextStep for gods sake. Or you can pay $12k to some "hacker school" bros.