But making the jump from there to programming seems like it would be frustrating, since you would need to start over with small projects to have any chance at learning the basics.

There’s definitely big pitfalls here but I think being able to actually produce software that is useful to you is a better starting point than toy projects that are only for learning purposes. LLMs producing code normally explain what they are doing, and give more detailed explanations when asked that can be supplemented by looking things up separately, which could be one way to learn enough to make your own edits to get around its mistakes and limitations.