I think this is just "discovering". While you (and I) probably discovered these things with assembly or C languages, it's perfectly reasonable or even appropriate for newer generations to have these kinds of experiences with Zig or Rust.
When I took my first programming class at RIT, visualizing the stack, variables, and pointers was one of the first classes we had. It's one of those beginner diagrams that I feel like everyone is familiar with. But I can understand that there are programming domains with equivalent complexity which don't require that base knowledge. I apologize if I came off as elitist.
It's more topical than many articles posted here imo. But topical is in the eye of the beholder.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Deeply interesting tech, or otherwise.
When learning piano you first learn how to play rudiments and then you move up to more complex scores.
Otherwise you end up writing an article about how Ravel' Scarbo is amazing because it involves playing with two hands at the same time.
If learning Piano was an example then everyone would have like you said learn the basic of everything and then build up on it. Modern day people learn multiple different chords and somehow string them together. If you do EE you have have learned how the piano works before you start playing the piano.
Worth remembering most people in programming today start with Javascript / Python or Ruby.
More common with guitar than piano though.
Similarly they are most popular with Javascript than with C
Those languages are hardly more abstract than learning Lisp or Prolog back in the day, other than (with exception of JavaScript) finally embracing dynamic compilers.
It boils down to how much one actually cares to learn and is curious to improve themselves.