"The first step is letting people know that learning to code is not that hard, and that if they put their mind to it they have a high chance of succeeding."

Is this even true? I think it's pretty well documented that the vast majority of the population actually has a high chance of failing. Look at failure rates in intro CS courses. Remember this?

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programm...