The article Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (by Peter Norvig), which talks about the path to become a professional programmer, underscores that it takes a significant amount of time to become proficient. It also highlights that the keys to learning programming are doing actual programming, acquiring skills as you go along, and learning from other programmers and programs.

Program. The best kind of learning is learning by doing. To put it more technically, “the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a function of extended experience, but the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of deliberate efforts to improve.” (p. 366) and “the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and corrections of errors.” … Talk with other programmers; read other programs. This is more important than any book or training course. If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don’t enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on your own or on the job. In any case, book learning alone won’t be enough. “Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter” says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker’s Dictionary.

All of this relates to minimum wage laws in that your productivity in the beginning months or years is low, but that’s not where you remain.

Being able to work with low productivity is an opportunity that allows you to become an actual professional.

If you are only legally allowed to be hired at a cost above your productivity then employers have to take a high risk in employing you (in the hopes that your productivity will go up quickly), which means they will be less likely to do so and instead be much more selective (which brings about further costs).

It also means that some people have no option but to go into debt in order to acquire sufficient skills. Some people, if they had the choice, would prefer not to go into debt and to work for below minimum wage wages, and make cost-cutting living decisions while trying to work their way up.

The article also illustrates that going the college+debt route is not necessarily an efficient path to become a good programmer. Learning in the field could end up with the person reaching higher capability in the same amount of time.

Going into debt for a career choice also brings with it the significant risk about what working options actually end up being available after four or more years of study.