What I can say that the priority is not so much teaching them X, Y, or Z framework, but teaching them what it means to "think like a programmer." You might not think that is teachable, but, well, empirically falsifiable. :)
I'd definitely call students who went through DBC "programmers." Many of them remark after graduating that they never realized how little they really knew. At the very least, we get them from unconscious incompetence to the bottom rung of conscious competence.
If all I were doing were teaching folks "cords[sic] from 10 popular tunes" I'd have no interest in doing it at all. Real programmers or bust.
I can't speak for anyone else, of course.
A proper education lasts longer than the duration of the actual instruction, so I trust that some of these "short term" programs can still make programmers (and anecdotally, I've heard good things about Dev Bootcamp).
"We should not sell humanity short by trying to solve the problem of beginners in our stuff. We need to make things for people to use, and we need to teach people and trust people to be able to learn how to do that"
"Just as we shouldn't target beginners in our designs... nor should we try to eliminate all effort. It's an anti-pattern. It's not going to yield a good instrument. It's okay for there to be effort."
As a workaday hacker, my own practice has been more sporadic than I want. This talk reminded me that practice needs to be structured and purposeful. And regularly done.
A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need to toil away for years before they reach master-level proficiency. Similarly with programming, I think it is fine for languages to present themselves succinctly for the benefit of experienced developers, but I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims you can learn to program in less than, say, 2 years.
I also think this is something to keep in mind with the recent explosion of "alternative programming schools". You can hand someone a guitar and, in a handful of weeks, teach them all the cords for 10 popular tunes. That person can then find a street corner in the nearest city, set down their open guitar case, and play those ten songs in rotation and make some money...but have we created a new musician?