I'm impressed too but also dismayed by how little the average person (or even the average CS person) understands about the low level stuff. I had a top notch CS undergrad degree, but I'm only truly able to grok some of the finer points 15 years out. And that's because I'm learning to use FPGAs as a hobby.

The Internet is truly marvelous in this regard. I'm using free tutorials, documentaries and videos to satisfy my curiosity and pretty much getting an EE education. Ignoring the car pictures, the Internet gives me much hope.

I didn't study CS, rather physics, and I find I know far more about "how it works" than most CS graduates I encounter and/or hire.

The reason is straightforward enough - I was a kid, and am now an adult, who cannot stop asking "why?", and habitually disassembled machines to understand them (and then usually hastily reassembled upon hearing the crunch of parental tyres on gravel). Having access to Brittanica as a kid helped too. I started making useful analogue circuits before I even knew ohm's law, as I could see and grok what components did when put together. Nothing beats reverse engineering as a learning experience, apart from perhaps forwards engineering.

Essentially, to have deep knowledge of something requires a desire to have that deep knowledge. Most are willing to stop at some level of abstraction and accept that things "just are", but others, myself included, need to understand how electrons work, why P-N junctions do what they do, what is this matter/energy thing anyway, or how about that spacetime thing that it sits within?

Turtles all the way down.

I'm in a similar boat. I have a CS background but only took one "Computer Organization" class which wasn't even that good but it gave me a starting point. I wish I'd at least minored in EE. What resources have you found especially useful? I'm using All About Circuits[1] to learn fundamentals of electricity in addition to whatever tutorials I read for particular projects.

[1]: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill is indispensable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Electronics

But why should the average person know how about "low level stuff"? A CS major should know the the level of gates and boolean logic but deeper than that why? Intel's cofounders weren't CS majors, one was physics and the other chemistry.

I agree. Unless the CS major is planning on specializing in embedded software, things like complexity classes and database normalization would be of more use. Even that is overkill, as in my experience leveraging and utilizing software libraries in the correct way often has already solved the issue at hand. Nowadays even more high level skills as that such as networking, caching, and distrusted computing are of more use when it comes to optimization.

For the same reasons they teach everyone history, math, languages, and the arts -- you should know on whose shoulders you stand.

Do you have any hardware you would recommend?

I usually purchase a lot of electronics hardware on a whim. With FPGAs, I'm forcing myself to learn how to use them before I spend the cash. There are quite a few boards out there though .. but this isn't a rec based on actual usage. The Papilio Duo seems like the one I'll get. My main concern is that this (and other hobbyist boards) use the Spartan 3 or 6. From what I can tell, it seems this has been retired by Xilinx. I'd prefer going with a Xilinx since the toolchain seems more popular with hobbyists.

Oh .. and for now, I have a cheap Cypress PSOC that I'm playing with. They were literally giving 'em away at Maker Faire :)

Having spent my entire career in the chip industry designing and defining chips, I'm still amazed year after year.