This is beside your point and question, but hang in there! Your passion and enthusiasm are no less noble, no less worth, no less valid just because the majority of the programming world has turned to soulless effectiveness instead of craftsmanship.

I also recently started learning C for similar reasons. I had no prior knowledge of or experience in programming whatsoever. I simply want to understand what's going on under "the hood" or "behind the scenes". Wanting to be able to at least read code and go "ah, I understand". Wanting to understand what the threshold between human readable code and binary variations in voltage looks like. Learning an assembler language would be the next natural step for me too.

I'm never going to shame my friends who work as professional programmers and use LLMs to whatever end in their production process - even more so if they are employed at some company - because they need to put bread on the table at home.

With that said, I don't think I'll ever be able to feel respect for the process itself. The tiny exception being maybe cyber security: vetting code, discovering zero days and the likes.

Again, sorry for the off topic comment, but hang in there and try to do and enjoy your thing!