[rswail]

None of what you talk about is computer science, it's applied programming.

Computer science is to programming in the same way that astronomy is to navigation.

How can a student "understand" LLMs without the background knowledge of computer science?

Programming courses can teach how to use LLMs, in the same way it can teach how to use Python, Java, language-de-jour.

[graemep]

I watched the video first lecture in the MIT course on which Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is based and it explains "computer science is not a science and is only incidentally to do with computers" and goes on to compare the relationship between CS and programming to that between geometry (which means "earth measurement") and surveying.