I started with C 30 years ago, wrote my PhD thesis in pain, tears and C, and then developed at a more or less amateur level until today (thankfully not in C any

I started with C 30 years ago, wrote my PhD thesis in pain, tears and C, and then developed at a more or less amateur level until today (thankfully not in C anymore). I read about bit-shifting operations but never, ever had the need to use them. So I did not push further and just know that they exist and that they look like <<. I hope I did not made your flabbergastering worse. Ah, I also wrote a (tiny) bit of the Linux kernel in ~1994 (what today would be modules). And still survived without <<