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.
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.