From the perspective of a CS student I can understand abstrating the computational theroy from the applied science of programming for a particluar ISA and agree

From the perspective of a CS student I can understand abstrating the computational theroy from the applied science of programming for a particluar ISA and agree with your point. A similar arguement can potentially be made for Software Engineering. However, if your discipline is EE or CE I'd have to disagree. Perhaps my educational experience and focus on embedded system design has distroted my view, but without starting with a basic understanding of computer and instruction set architectures I don't think I would have or could have been successful. Yes, assembly is tedious and modern compilers do a much better job optimizing for 99% of all cases. But knolwedge of computer architecture as well as an understanding of how to represent common high level program structures (if, for, while...) coupled with a basic understanding of stacks and how C utilizes them at runtime is nothing short of foundational. It is the kind of information that has allowed me to transition to from different platforms and high level languages with very little effort because they are all built upon the same principles. To be cliche about it, its simply learning to crawl before you can walk.