I would argue that there's a big difference between "demystify how the text of your program changes the coloured lights on your screen" and "demystify why the t

I would argue that there's a big difference between "demystify how the text of your program changes the coloured lights on your screen" and "demystify why the text of your program changes the coloured lights on your screen". I agree, there is a big difference between implementation and semantics, but I would normally expect a compilers class to focus on implementation (and I wouldn't expect a typical languages or compilers class to spend half a semester teaching how lambda calculus works as a computation model).