This is actually quite interesting, as this seems like something that would be taught in a CE curriculum as opposed to being in a first-year CS course. From the

This is actually quite interesting, as this seems like something that would be taught in a CE curriculum as opposed to being in a first-year CS course. From the people I know who studied CS they may have exposure to HDL and digital logic in the upper years if they say elected to take a computer archicture course, but their introductory courses mostly focused on programming and algorithms. I guess it really depends on the school - I have a EE/CE background so I know these things, but the CS people I know mostly don't.