I think we're way past the point where mindlessly playing around and idle curiosity can reliably teach someone how to program. That might get them interested in programming, but it's one thing to print something to a terminal or change the text on an exiting page; it's quite something else to get a GUI app going or deploy Rails to a server. And GUI/web is pretty bare-minimum when it comes to keeping people interested in programming. Not a whole lot of people want to write console applications anymore.
Here's the sticking points where beginners need your help, and might not even have enough information to actually ask what they're looking for:
What framework do I use? I see people talking about AngularJS, so I'm going to pick that one. Oh wow, it's harder than I thought bzzzt you just lost a future programmer.
How do I deploy? DigitalOcean costs money, bzzzt there goes another. I paid for DigitalOcean, but I ran into troubles installing pip, bzzt there goes another.
How do I make a GUI? Tkinter, Wx, Qt, GTK, WPF, bzzzt there goes another.
And the worst of them all... "What language should I learn?"
Yeah, a lot of programmers might not want to hear this. But there are a lot of languages. You can't blame a beginner for not being able to decide. And to be honest, there isn't really a good choice here, which is why programmers get into fights about languages and when that happens, bzzzt there goes another. Javascript sucks, but people claim its essential. Beginners get turned off by hearing "Javascript sucks but you have to learn it". The better option is to just not learn programming. Or bringing political wars into it. "Don't learn C# because M$". Beginners don't care about your politics, they want to learn. Eventually people settle on Python, so the beginner starts learning Python, then asks "what GUI framework" or "how do I deploy Django" and we start back at the top of this list.
So, in the midst of all of this confusion happening for a beginner, they're (understandably) lost and ask for a lighthouse to guide them on a path, any path, as long as they don't have to make the choices themselves. So they ask the question "how do I learn to program". And the response they get? "You don't learn how to program, you just start programming."
It's funny you use walking as an example. I never told my son to "just walk" but I may as well have. No one taught him, he never asked how. It just never occurred to him that there was any option but to keep trying until it works. As far as I know everyone learns to walk this way.
In my generation and before it, most of us learned coding the same way. (And self esteem for that matter.) Even if you do have the luxury of teachers and classes and handholding and cheerleading, the real learning is not going to happen until you sit down with a code editor and actually try to make something real.
And if the first difficulty you hit causes you to turn around and run then that's another win. It's a very fast way for you to learn this not a career or hobby for you, because dealing with those decisions and difficulties is a major part of the job. 30 years in I'm still dealing with stuff like that every day.
You taught your son to walk by walking. He learned to walk because everyone around him was walking. That's undeniably the best way to learn: being in an immersive environment. That's akin to going to hacker school.
What I'm saying is 'just write something' doesn't help people who would ask the question 'how do I learn programming', It helps the people who ask 'how do I get better at programming'. You get better at walking by walking more. You get better at coding by coding more. You start walking by learning it from someone else, or by using something to pull yourself up (like a chair or a table leg). You learn programming by asking how and following their advice.
Your son didn't ask how to walk because he didn't know the question. Beginners don't ask how to deploy because they don't know what deploy means. "Just code" doesn't answer the problem of "how do I write a GUI app". It makes it seem like it's so easy that you shouldn't have to ask. And since you don't know the answer and no one will tell you, programming must be hard, or you must be stupid. That's what a teacher or a mentor offers. Advice. Not glib remarks.
Here's the sticking points where beginners need your help, and might not even have enough information to actually ask what they're looking for:
What framework do I use? I see people talking about AngularJS, so I'm going to pick that one. Oh wow, it's harder than I thought bzzzt you just lost a future programmer.
How do I deploy? DigitalOcean costs money, bzzzt there goes another. I paid for DigitalOcean, but I ran into troubles installing pip, bzzt there goes another.
How do I make a GUI? Tkinter, Wx, Qt, GTK, WPF, bzzzt there goes another.
And the worst of them all... "What language should I learn?"
Yeah, a lot of programmers might not want to hear this. But there are a lot of languages. You can't blame a beginner for not being able to decide. And to be honest, there isn't really a good choice here, which is why programmers get into fights about languages and when that happens, bzzzt there goes another. Javascript sucks, but people claim its essential. Beginners get turned off by hearing "Javascript sucks but you have to learn it". The better option is to just not learn programming. Or bringing political wars into it. "Don't learn C# because M$". Beginners don't care about your politics, they want to learn. Eventually people settle on Python, so the beginner starts learning Python, then asks "what GUI framework" or "how do I deploy Django" and we start back at the top of this list.
So, in the midst of all of this confusion happening for a beginner, they're (understandably) lost and ask for a lighthouse to guide them on a path, any path, as long as they don't have to make the choices themselves. So they ask the question "how do I learn to program". And the response they get? "You don't learn how to program, you just start programming."
Bzzt, you just lost the entire next generation.