Almost the same experience here; I have great nostalgia for that feeling, and the waiting for hours to finish. Nice to hear similar stories from someone else! I still have my copy of "Chaos", and it was (and still is) awesome, but another book I got around the same time was "Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics", which included pseudocode, that I had to rewrite into Commodore-64 compatible BASIC.
I'd coded prior to this; I got my Commodore when I was like 11 (the family machine, but I used it by far the most). Mostly typing in games from magazines, but fractals were the first thing that felt like it was "computer science" - something that really explores a new space that just wouldn't be possible without a computer.
I WANT to say "Thumb drive", but I always get ahead of myself and start with "USB" and then either my brain catches up and I say "USB drive" or I lose it and end up "USB thing" or "USB stick".
I think this is the flavor of question that should be asked, tho I'd go further. For one thing, I've always really loathed the phrase "full stack" - if you've ever written a UI that has to drive hardware that requires assembly level firmware, built a CI/CD pipeline to run tests, build artifacts, manage infrastructure, update firmware and send it all out into the world, you _might_ be "full stack", for everyone else it's just a colloquial term for a web front end and a database API developer.
But I digress.
Even in the common context, to be Full Stack, I'd argue that you should be better than the sum of the parts. The lift you get from being able to decide, intelligently and at the speed of thought (without talking to a counterpart on the other end), which pieces of code - optimization, safeguards, business logic, etc. - belong in the front and back end, and how they interact at peak effectiveness, is more valuable than just the ability to build a good API or build a good web page.
Further, a full stack engineer, in my experience, is more likely to reach for tools like websockets, memcached, etc. earlier in a project than typical REST APIs (for example) where the line between back- and front- end require a bit more coordinated architecting, to achieve a richer end result.
But I doubt this is widely accepted. Anyway, my point is I wouldn't focus on either just because; I'd focus on what makes you better by knowing some of both. What can you learn in the back-end to support problems you're familiar with in the front-end, and what can you do in the front-end to make better use of your knowledge in the back-end? That's where full-stack value really lies.
I'm at least half serious -- the arts, including culinary arts, is a place to look. The color indigo comes to mind as an older example (even if science discovered it, it was a breakthrough due to its adoption in art and fashion)... lately Black 3.0 (or Vantablack) may have made enough ripples to count.
Have there been Legal or Political breakthroughs? Was reopening the Cuban border a "breakthrough"? Is electing female world leaders a "breakthrough"? Legalizing gay marriage? Marijuana decriminalization? I could make an argument for any of those.
I'd make a list of what you think "non-stem" areas are (by career, maybe) and look into that. Finance, real-estate, mechanics, art, fashion -- they probably have "breakthroughs" that people outside the fields are not familiar with, at various scales.
I'd coded prior to this; I got my Commodore when I was like 11 (the family machine, but I used it by far the most). Mostly typing in games from magazines, but fractals were the first thing that felt like it was "computer science" - something that really explores a new space that just wouldn't be possible without a computer.