[antiverse]

Looking back it's really strange that nowhere in our CS/Soft Eng. curriculum is it covered exactly what is meant by the term "abstraction" when it comes to how a computer works. That it's all, after all, shuffling of electrons (underlying MOSFET chemistry notwithstanding) and signals is the missing link.

There's other books out there, and Ben Eater's website, that indepth show how to construct processor, gates, store "memory", and so on.

[qbasic_forever]

When I was in school 'computer engineering' was the degree you wanted for that level of understanding. It was a blend of 50/50 computer science and electrical engineering. You'd learn enough analog EE to understand transistors and enough digital EE to understand logic and computer architecture (this is really where you learn the gory details of how a CPU works internally). Then you'd focus on enough CS to flesh out low level OS, systems programming, etc. to make it all work. Basically learn enough to go from nothing but a circuit diagram to a computer booting up a display with a login prompt for an OS you designed and built, on hardware you designed and built.

[skavi]

Still is as you describe. Just graduated from a CompE program.

[skeeter2020]

You're describing what was the CompSci option for an egineering degree when I went to Uni the first time. If you look at another great book for learning the "full picture", Nand to Tetris, Comp Sci is the second half of the book while Engineering seems to fill the space between physics and low-level software.

[2snakes]

Right. Imagine a car. Now consider how it is abstracted to you. The wheel, the controls, the pedals. That's an abstraction of the complex system that is a car.