I have also tried to teach people how to code, though mostly in the context of them needing to do it in order to complete a specific project. I've found that unless they are motivated to learn from the ground up, they won't tend to have much understanding of what you're telling them, and at best will be able to copy/paste snippets. I've found that it's actually surprisingly hard to get across simple concepts like variables without starting from basics.

I'm curious sometimes what would have happened had I not learned these skills; coding concepts apply to so many things in life, and help solve many problems in pragmatic and efficient ways.

This is spot on. Since teaching myself to become a programmer I've also gotten much better as a musician, as a mechanic, as an amateur woodworker and as as learner of Spanish. The combination of dealing with logic, language and abstraction stimulates the brain across all endeavors.

> Teaching programming is significantly more difficult than doing it (IMO).

Programming isn't hard to teach or to learn, but it is incredibly frustrating to do both.

I guess you could say it's hard because it is frustrating.