There may be some form of survivorship bias against refreshed math curriculums in many of the people who use HN. I assume many of us are in STEM fields and did well enough in K-12 programs to get there.
I did however make a friend at that high school (in English class) whose dad worked at a big tech company and helped me get into the industry. The school's computer programming club was fun too.
Then again I'm almost 40; maybe it's different for younger people.
Presumably writers seldom end up writing about the texts they studied in high school, but they may pick up similar impressions of what they like, and what they are good at.