Lets say he learns coding, who will give him a job without that precious piece of paper?
With a few weeks of training, this guy will probably be about as good as many of the ‘software professionals’ that you’ll find on fiverr.com. While many of them may actually be good coders, there are quite a few ‘wannabes’ as well.
A lot of the very best coders have no degrees... If he can find a company - even a temp agency - who's willing to give him a test, it could be a first step.
A guy I worked with when I was first starting in IT (teaching myself unix out of the Bell Labs "phone book" and Steven Bourne's "Russian Doll" book, and K&R C, 1st edition.) This guy was a top notch coder, writing entire DBMS using C. He was brought up around computers, and we worked for his father. He had problems getting a job with AT&T - They wouldn't touch him w/o a degree, but the managers REALLY wanted him. The AT&T managers found a temp agency to hire him, and he wound up working as a contractor for AT&T for really good money.
Mark