The first thing to do is ask yourself if you really want to become a programmer. Do you like programming? Have you ever tried it before? How comfortable are you with computers? You might be the go-to guy/girl for your friends and family, but are you 40 hours a week comfortable? How much time are you willing to spend debugging a confusing error message before running for help? Do you get any internal gratification from writing a computer program that runs successfully? What's going to keep you going when nothing you try works and you've been bashing your head on the same problem for a week?

The reason is that there are tons of jobs within the software industry at all salary levels that do not require coding. QAs, IT recruiters, business analysts, DB admins, designers, product owners, system administrators, etc. All these people benefit directly from the software industry and many do not know a lick of coding.

I think part of it is this sort of national illusion that everyone can become a programmer. But programming is just not for everyone. Learning to program requires a high level of diligence and self-motivation. In other words, you have to enjoy it. Not everyone is going to be inspired by "public static void main(string[] args) {}." A lot of people take one programming class and know right away it's not for them, and that's totally fine.