Your idea about going from architecture to programming in the other way of traditional curricula, in my opinion, has a lot of merit. Other seem to agree.
An Israeli professor, Noam Nisan, created a course specifically for this purpose, now branded even more popularly as Nand2Tetris course and book.[0]
Why did he teach something obvious like this? From the site:
"Why Bother? Because many CS students don't understand how computers work; because fewer and fewer students take compilation courses; because many computer architecture courses are too detailed and too dry; because nothing beats the thrill of creating something from almost nothing; because Nand2Tetris engages students in implementing some of the coolest algorithms, data structures and techniques in applied computer science, and because the typical student feedback in Nand2Tetris courses is 'the best course I ever took'."
My first exposure to this was at a hackerspace in my area, where far more experienced programmers than I were wrestling with this "hardware and low-level OS layers were a black box" that ever more complex systems and programming environments have created.
I remember being the first time in a while, as an IT guy who plays with open source a lot, I got real enthusiastic even though it was rough for me (I never had a chance to finish). I encourage everyone to look into, because it was designed by Nisan specifically to address the deficiencies you had mentioned, and I watched a lot of skilled hackers fall in love with computers again because of it.
A similar textbook[0] is used at UIUC in the Computer Engineering curriculum. I've read both books and I think this one is better, but its not free and its priced like a textbook[1].
It's not that Java is a bad language to write programs in per se (platform agnosticism can be a huge help for educational purposes). It's just a bad language to teach programming.
It is this kind of nitpicking, without justified analysis of the course (where you do not program in Java, but a language specific to the course for building logic gates and working your way up) and without appreciation for the JVM, Java, and its interaction with the right kind of platform that leads me to believe we missed the entire point of this thread in the comments.
An Israeli professor, Noam Nisan, created a course specifically for this purpose, now branded even more popularly as Nand2Tetris course and book.[0]
Why did he teach something obvious like this? From the site:
"Why Bother? Because many CS students don't understand how computers work; because fewer and fewer students take compilation courses; because many computer architecture courses are too detailed and too dry; because nothing beats the thrill of creating something from almost nothing; because Nand2Tetris engages students in implementing some of the coolest algorithms, data structures and techniques in applied computer science, and because the typical student feedback in Nand2Tetris courses is 'the best course I ever took'."
My first exposure to this was at a hackerspace in my area, where far more experienced programmers than I were wrestling with this "hardware and low-level OS layers were a black box" that ever more complex systems and programming environments have created.
I remember being the first time in a while, as an IT guy who plays with open source a lot, I got real enthusiastic even though it was rough for me (I never had a chance to finish). I encourage everyone to look into, because it was designed by Nisan specifically to address the deficiencies you had mentioned, and I watched a lot of skilled hackers fall in love with computers again because of it.
[0] http://www.nand2tetris.org/