The key thing is that the person in question needs to have some problem that they want solving. If you don't have a program that you want to write (and something sensible and well-defined, not "I want to write the next Quake!") then you can't learn to program, because you have nothing to motivate you. I mean, you could read a book and have a rough understanding of a language's syntax and semantics, but until you have a program that you want written you'll never grasp the nettle.
If that impetus exists then everything else is just minor details.