Well, a considerable amount of what you call "80s high school hobby programmers" ended up going through formal computer science education in an university, the only difference being that a lot of them already had been programming since their early teens.

On the contrary, my experience is that Gen-X programmers are far more sentimental about the machine and languages, while Millenials have been raised in the cult of the VC backed startup money printing machine.

Just compare the zeitgeist of Slashdot circa 2000 with the ethos of HN nowadays.