I learned computer engineering bottom-up and top-down. Bottom-up as a teen reading books and manuals. Since no one I knew had an actual computer in 1979, like A

I learned computer engineering bottom-up and top-down. Bottom-up as a teen reading books and manuals. Since no one I knew had an actual computer in 1979, like Ada Lovelace, I built the computers in my mind, LOL. Then in college I did some top-down too by writing C and then compiling to assembly and then compiling to machine code. we also had to build a CPU from discrete bit-slice components and then program it. One of the most time intensive courses I took at CMU. Do computer engineers still have to do that? I would certainly encourage all computer engineers, and perhaps even software engineers, to learn the "full stack". But as to programming and C, I haven't done that in almost 30 years. It would be an interesting experiment to see how much of that skill if any I still possess.