It used to be that old farts made a big deal out of knowing the ins and outs of assembly programming and sneered at the kids who only knew "high level" languages like C, why, those damn kids didn't even understand the machine code their compilers emitted, didn't even know or care that it was so obviously suboptimal.

Really, your attitude is not new. Including even your "this is why it's different this time", its just a mirror reflecting the past.