I think that teaching myself C++ in the late 90’s was a mistake. I remember going through an entire textbook, not being able to do anything with it and stopped programming for years.
I learned C++ in the late 90s and also struggled. I now barely use it at all, mostly relying on garbage collecting languages. But knowing how memory is managed, that it's a resource that can easily be abused, even in a garbage collecting environment has been a huge boon to how I architect projects.
