I personally agree with your inclination to teach them using a clean functional language. I'm sure it would be possible to produce a few excellent software dev

I personally agree with your inclination to teach them using a clean functional language. I'm sure it would be possible to produce a few excellent software developers doing the bottom up approach as well, starting with a course on hardware, then assembly and then going up the stack from there. I would have loved that approach personally, but it would probably turn the average CS student into an awful programmer.