MIT does have a required course 6.004 that starts you off computing doped semiconducter behavior, building circuits using a simple HDL (JSim when I did it, seem

MIT does have a required course 6.004 that starts you off computing doped semiconducter behavior, building circuits using a simple HDL (JSim when I did it, seems to be something else now). You build combinatorial logic, sequential logic, an ALU, your own CPU implementing a RISC machine code spec, making sure your circuit-simulated CPU can run basic machine code programs, optimizing the machine code programs running on your home-grown CPU. In the end you're spending all day/week/month optimizing your CPU by stripping out gates, pipelining, all at a circuit/gate/HDL level, with your final project score computed numerically from how fast your optimized machine code program is running on your optimized home-grown CPU. Probably one of the best classes I took when I was there. Doesn't really matter whether or not it was the first class or not I don't think.