My advice: buy a subscription to teamtreehouse.com. Take ALL of the courses on HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP and/or Rails. They should then take what they've learned and build one or more projects, preferably hosted in a public GitHub repo, that act as a portfolio for potential employers. If they prove that they've actually built a real project(s) that actually does something, they'll be on a good track to find a job.
IMHO, they should avoid programming books. You don't learn how to play baseball by reading a book about baseball; you learn baseball by playing baseball. The same is true for programming: they'll learn more by building something, anything than they would from a book. Books may help them later in their career after they mastered basic programming subjects. For this piece of advice, I'd add one caveat: I have met some programmers who have learned immensely from books, so, if one of your friends falls into this category, discard my anti-book advice. In any case, the focus must stay on project building.
Finally, I would add that if you, or someone else, or a number of experienced programmers could mentor them through this process, that would probably help more than any other resource.
IMHO, they should avoid programming books. You don't learn how to play baseball by reading a book about baseball; you learn baseball by playing baseball. The same is true for programming: they'll learn more by building something, anything than they would from a book. Books may help them later in their career after they mastered basic programming subjects. For this piece of advice, I'd add one caveat: I have met some programmers who have learned immensely from books, so, if one of your friends falls into this category, discard my anti-book advice. In any case, the focus must stay on project building.
Finally, I would add that if you, or someone else, or a number of experienced programmers could mentor them through this process, that would probably help more than any other resource.