Reading books has always been a niche activity. Many (most?) people don't have any books, and haven't read any since they were forced to at school. Of course HN readers will skew towards readers but they are the minority.
C string processing is the other "billion dollar mistake" we are all paying for decades later (in terms of slow programs, time wasted, power used etc).
"If you learn for Rails, start with 5.2.3, webpacker and the other black magic in Rails 6 will frustrate you and currently eliminates a lot of the ease of getting started and building relatively sophisticated web apps quickly."
Martin Campbell-Kelly was my lecturer for "History of Computing" at Warwick University in 1986. Nice guy, and one of the few CS courses I actually enjoyed :-)
My 20s were spent living the single bachelor party life in London in the 90s. Noughties I had 3 kids and emigrated to Australia. Then I hit 40...then 50. Now I'm 52, still in good health. I have a job, a partner, family, a few savings. Sure I haven't written the next great novel or got a PHD, but I sure as hell don't worry about what might have been.