I was stuck in this phase for 12-13 years, partly because I really just wanted to be able to do stuff, and wasn't all that interested in how the computer worked

I was stuck in this phase for 12-13 years, partly because I really just wanted to be able to do stuff, and wasn't all that interested in how the computer worked or how to do low level bit-twiddling. Then I learned Python, which pretty much allowed me to get stuff done immediately (executable pseudocode and all that). This provided enough of a bridge that other languages and an interest in how things were constructed could develop, but I didn't start out that way.