It takes many students 4 years of dedicated study in a university to barely be able to qualify for a decent internship or entry-level job in the games industry.
If learning to program where all that easy, everyone would do it and we'd all be making minimum wage. Learning any skill requires the same process: persevere, practice constantly, and don't be afraid to ask for help when you're stuck.
Yes, that is important too.
Speaking from my own expierience, I did an apprenticeship as Programmer before going to study CS. My last year of apprenticeship I spent in a Programming Team, we learned Java in School for a year during the apprenticeship.
I literally had no idea about this weird OO thing and Java, until the Boss of the team I did the last year of my apprenticeship in decided to pick a java project for the practical part of my final exams.
I had to understand Java in a week to get a good grade and not fail the exams. Still, the year before I literally sat about 4 hours per week trying to learn Java and couldn't even grasp the concepts of OO 
So don't underestimate Java. Even though people say its easier than other programming languages... if its your first language (or first OO language), it will take you some time to understand it.
