Programming languages are simply syntactic representations of predefined concepts. For the most part, if you can understand the concept the programming language isn't hard to pick up. Hell, I taught myself Python when I was 9 years old -- it wasn't the syntax of the programming language that was hard or the reason why I wasn't instantly a good developer. I needed (and still need) the real world experience of understanding the complexities of real software in order to develop real software. Anyone who understands these complexities and is only hampered by knowing the syntax of a programming language is underselling themselves -- with only a little more hard work they should be able to easily begin a development career.
