When I finished the course and I realized that I understood how a computer worked from the logic gates all the way to the assembler, it really blew me away. This sort of course most importantly reveals that computers aren’t “magic”, the knowledge of the processes all the way down makes people better equipped (mentally if not practically) to deal with any number of computer-related situations. I can’t imagine a person with a legitimate curiousity about computers not benefitting from this sort of course, and definitely feel that my own computer science education would have been incomplete without it.

I agree that having a holistic view of computer systems is often useful, but I’m not sure it’s always necessary or the best thing to spend time on. In particular, I think modern computer systems are at the point where designing a physical computer system is a distinct discipline from designing something that uses a computer system—it might be nice to know how a TLB works, how NAND gates are assembled into higher-order logical circuits, and so on, but is this actually any more necessary for a CS student to know than what a 65-nm process is, how transistors work, and so on? Even leaving aside future field shifts, I’d say even today I’d consider designing CPUs out of logic gates to be more a part of engineering than CS, though admittedly closer to CS than chip fabrication or transistor physics are.

Which isn’t to say it’s not useful, but I think how useful it is depends on what sort of CS student one is. If someone is more interested in, say, theory of computation, or machine learning, or another area of that sort, I think having a much more solid grounding in mathematics than is typically common in CS undergraduate programs would be a better use of time.

My point wasn’t that CS programs should cover more systems topics, but that a holistic look at systems is worthwhile for all CS students. Maybe it’s better for students to do a one- or two- semester course like this and have a unit on building on a CPU instead of spending a whole semester putting logic gates together? The real benefit is not that you sneak in more topics that you otherwise wouldn’t (virualization, for instance) but that a complete view of comptuer systems (everything that is part of the discipline of CS, anyway) can be attained, rather than just an in-depth understanding of a few pieces.

Having taken that course in logic, which was required in my undergrad program, I agree about the importance of that course.

It depends on what you want to do, really. It’s all useful on some level, but not necessarily more useful than other things—for example, students interested in AI may benefit more from a class on philosophy of mind or cognitive science (or both) than from a class on circuit design. I’d also argue that a basic class on formal logic should be a part of every CS curriculum, while currently that doesn’t seem to be the case.