> The thing is, do you actually take anything away? If you don't talk about caching in the CPU, scheduling in the OS, or propagation delay in the gates, how doe

> The thing is, do you actually take anything away? If you don't talk about caching in the CPU, scheduling in the OS, or propagation delay in the gates, how does that help your understanding of how to write software? What materials and courses structured like this excel at doing is very rapid demystification. They quickly allow the student to remove the "and this layer is black magic" notion of things and give them structure on which they can realize the limits of their own knowledge, or learn to know what they don't know. With this sort of foundation they are better equipped to teach themselves. Materials and courses like this are not vocational, and don't pretend to be. They are very much the opposite.