[borgia]

Mastering something and merely learning competence in it are two different things though. I don't think the "Teach yourself X in Y" type books are claiming to be turning people into masters, similarly I'm sure many of the learning piano/sculpting/art type books aren't claiming to be making master artists out of their readers.

I think, with the right resources (people, material), if someone dedicated themselves to learning programming/software development actively for 2 years they could become extremely proficient in it. Not masters across a number of different languages and paradigms, of course, but just very proficient in a few of them to the point where they could churn out good work/projects/ideas with it.