You started with logic gates. How much EE did you do, or the actual physics that makes the transistor possible? Those are the previous (deeper) levels that people had to know before they got abstracted away.

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VorpalWay 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I took software focused computer engineering around 2010, we still had courses that took us all the way down to transistors and even the physics of P and N junctions and how that applies to CMOS. (And even some basic analog electronics.)

Did I end up an expert at those layers? Of course not, but I know the basics and I know enough that if I need to I know where to start learning more. Just like I wasn't a C++ or hard realtime expert after university either, but now a decade and a half later I am pretty good at those (and a bunch of other skills that ended up relevant to my line of work).

Basically, none of the layers are "magic" to me. Even if I don't know the details of it, I know the general principle and I know I could learn more if I need it.

(I think you naturally end up an expert at the layer(s) you work in, and the knowledge tapers off as you go down (or up) the stack. For example, I know a fair bit about how the CPU works (cache coherency, pipeline stalls etc), I can passably read x86 assembly, etc. Because they affect the layer I work at (hard realtime systems C++ and now also Rust). I know far less about web dev than hardware.)

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rapidaneurism 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Similar experience in the 90s, but we don't really know the intricacies of doping silicone, or smelting metal to make the pins. And what about mining it?

I think the last time people knew how things were made was in preindustrial societies because they had to build everything themselves (whatever little things they had)

	▲	dranudin 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I was once in a museum in Bolzano, Italy. And they had the ice man mummy there (we call him Ötzi). He died like 5000years ago. And his "axe" was made of copper from some mine very far away. So even this guy probably did not know how everything he had was made. There is a theory that he was probably very rich. So maybe less rich people were more in touch with what they owned. But still I found it fascinating that even so far back people relied on technology and materials that they didn't really know about.
	▲	VorpalWay 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I partially disagree. I know the basic high level concept of all those. Would I be able to reproduce state of the art results on my own? Obviously not. But a core part of the engineer or scientist mindset is curiosity for the sake of curiosity. Just the fact that I don't know something is enough reason for me to poke at it or otherwise learn more. Same reason I still take apart broken electronics as an adult and try to find the fault (and sometimes even repair it). By the way, mining silicon is particularly easy: it's basically sand. The difficult part is purifying it, especially to the levels needed for modern nm scale chips. A more useful question than making high end silicon would be: could you with reasonable tooling reproduce basic electric components? I'm talking things like light bulbs, resistors, generators, perhaps capacitors even? Just the basics crappy versions, not modern highly optimised surface mount components. And I think the anwer is yes (for me personally) if I had access to metal wire and sheet stock and industrial revolution era tools.

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hatthew 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Simply by the fact that you say computer engineering, you already went deeper than 99% of "computer people" in 2010

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vladms 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have similar experience with the poster, and the way I read it is, "from the things I build here are some examples". I did learn about advanced physics topics that enable transistors, and even did some experiments, but for fundamental stuff you "don't build stuff".

Did I do all physics or all electronic circuit design or all software stacks? Definitely not. But I spent 3 years learning (and building) about lots of stuff.

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alex_c 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The one thing I appreciated about my Computer Engineering undergrad - and it took me a few years to fully appreciate it - is that yes, we did cover those levels.

The first two years were shared with Electrical Engineering. The second two years started to specialize towards Computer Engineering topics.

* Physics and chemistry.

* Circuits.

* Transistors.

* Logic gates.

* FPGAs.

* Assembly.

* Compilers.

* CPU and hardware design.

* Operating systems.

* Networking layers.

* Programming languages.

* Computer graphics.

Did I master all of the above - absolutely not. I loved some of them, struggled with others. Generally the cut-off for how my brain works is logic gates, I was never strong at the levels below that.

But we did cover them, and I could honestly say I had at least a rough understanding and mental map of everything that happens inside a computer from the point where it's plugged into an outlet, to the point where pixels show up on the screen.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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jjk7 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, they taught that too.