For a good "what's programming really is" class mobile app development and some web dev would be great. First a mobile hello world. Kotlin preferably. Then they can whip up a very basic backend (it just spews out rows from a DB), again in Kotlin. And then they can slap an admin UI on top in HTML.
And then over the next few years it would be great to dissect this. CPU, ALU, ASM, raw memory, network basics, IP (BGP ~ distance vector routing), TCP, buffers, syscalls. RDBMS, MVCC, B-trees, merge sort, heap sort, and so on.
Oh well, one can dream. But usually students are just bombarded with completely disconnected courses.
And then over the next few years it would be great to dissect this. CPU, ALU, ASM, raw memory, network basics, IP (BGP ~ distance vector routing), TCP, buffers, syscalls. RDBMS, MVCC, B-trees, merge sort, heap sort, and so on.
Oh well, one can dream. But usually students are just bombarded with completely disconnected courses.