Depends. There are paths into development that don't rely on formal training. 10 years ago I was a customer service advisor, now I'm a test analyst (with coding experience). You can work your way into technical roles. One of the best things I did (other than immerse myself in learning about computing in my spare time) was to start learning SQL. Anyone that uses Excel to do their job can benefit from learning SQL, and it's been very useful to me even when I wasn't directly in a software development team. In addition, you can get plenty of use out of the basics and build up your knowledge over time.
The point is, even if you can't train a new developer in a weekend, on-the-job training can help people build up to it eventually, with the added benefit of the employee being more effective at what they do along the way (basic coding skills are useful for cutting down on a lot of time-consuming tasks).
Oh and if an experienced coder has trouble with version control software, perhaps that's a sign that the approach to version control may be overly complex. From what I've seen of version control systems, the hardest task is merging branches, and the need to constantly create branches can be mitigated against through better management of centralised repositories (which still works with DVCS like Git).
The point is, even if you can't train a new developer in a weekend, on-the-job training can help people build up to it eventually, with the added benefit of the employee being more effective at what they do along the way (basic coding skills are useful for cutting down on a lot of time-consuming tasks).
Oh and if an experienced coder has trouble with version control software, perhaps that's a sign that the approach to version control may be overly complex. From what I've seen of version control systems, the hardest task is merging branches, and the need to constantly create branches can be mitigated against through better management of centralised repositories (which still works with DVCS like Git).