[necovek]

25 years ago computers were mostly interesting to "geeks", and those looking to program them were even more so (ok, that's really 30-35).

Yes, it started to shift 25 years ago already, but what has obviously changed significantly is that software development became a good paying job, which attracted even wider masses not caring about the fundamentals. There are certainly more self-taught programmers who dive into those fundamentals in absolute numbers, but relatively they are more of a minority. But that means that there are even more who do not care in absolute numbers.