[zozbot234]

> I had the fortunate experience early on of building my own virtual CPU and RAM, then I learned assembly, then C, then algorithms, then OSes, then about Unix.

I suppose what's missing from that experience is the reality of programming "in the large", where modularizing code and creating well-defined interface boundaries becomes quite critical. The easiest step forward coming from C would be learning something like Rust - or, historically, C++. This is when the broad high-level patterns and approaches that SICP discusses at length in a theoretical way become practically useful.