I mean, I graduated over 20 years ago now, but I had to take a number of EE courses for my CS major. Guess that isn't a thing now, or in a lot of places? Just assumed some level of EE knowledge was required for a CS degree this whole time.

In my own uni's coursework the closest we get are some labs where students some simple adder circuits, which we do just to save them from embarassing gaps in their knowledge (like happened in the inital comment). It doesn't add much beyond a slightly better understanding of how things can be implemented, if we're being honest.

I don't have a degree

Informatics is a much better name imo

My BS in CS took its roots down to CMOS composition of logic gates and basic EE, on the hardware side, and down to deriving numbers and arithmetic from Boolean logic / predicate calculus, on the philosophy side. Then tied those up together through the theoretical underpinnings of computation and problem solving, like a trunk, and branched back out into the various mainstream technologies that derived from all that. It obviously all depends on the program at the school of choice, I suppose, and I'm sure it's evolved over the years, but it still seems important to have at least some courses that pull back the wizard's curtain to ensure their students really see how it's all just an increasingly elaborate, high-tech version of conceptually simple (in function) machinery carrying out fundamental building blocks of logic.

Anyway, I'm going to go sniff my own cinnamon roll scented farts while gazing in the mirror, now.

Computational theory would be a better name, but it overlaps with a more specific subset of what is normally called CS.

It wasn't named by IT people, though. It was named by academics. And it's not about using computers, it's about computing. Computer science is older than digital electronics.

Ok, but he didn't know what a transistor is. Like I get not knowing the mechanics or chemistry of it, but to literally not know it or how it applies to a computer boggles my mind.