Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?

From Software into Hardware? Your fastest route in is to learn Python and find one of the many startups hiring for CocoTB-based verification roles. Depends a bit on what country you're in - I'm happy to give recommendations for the UK!

If you're feeling like learning SystemVerilog, then learn Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), to get into the verification end.

If you want to stay in software but be involved in chip design, then you need to learn C, C++ or Rust (though really C and C++ still dominate!). Then dabble in some particular application of those languages, such as embedded software (think: Arduino), firmware (play with any microcontroller or RPi - maybe even write your own bootloader), compiler (GCC/LLVM), etc.

The other route into software end of chip design is entry-level roles in functional or performance modelling teams, or via creating and running benchmarks. One, the other, or both. This is largely all C/C++ (and some Python, some Rust) software that models how a chip works at some abstract level. At one level, it's just high-performance software. At another, you have to start to learn something of how a chip is designed to create a realistic model.

And if you're really really stuck for "How on earth does a computer actually work", then feel free to check out my YouTube series that teaches 1st-year undergraduate computer architecture, along with building the same processor design in Minecraft (ye know, just for fun. All the taught material is the same!). [Shameless plug ;) ]

Age has an effect, no matter if it's software or electronics. These types learned their trade once, some decades ago, and keep driving like that.

If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them. No company has the money to spend nor the inclination to even suggest education to their workers. Companies usually consider that a waste of time and money. I don't know why. Probably because "investing" in your work force is considered stupid because they'll fire you the moment a quarterly earnings call looks less than stellar.

EE engineers design components and new materials for maybe computers (or not), CS engineers should be able to design CPU's.

Side note: Formal theorem proving is even more rare than formal model checking..!

I lived in both worlds (hardware/software) throughout my career. In school, I learned (in order): Analog electronics (including RF), Digital electronics, Microprocessors, Software, Systems. I've always thought that it's strange how few software people know hardware, and vice versa. In the software domain, when I began referencing hardware elements while explaining something, the software audience would usually just glaze over and act like they were incapable of understanding. Same goes for the hardware people when I would reference software elements.

I learned Ada sometime around 1991. Counting assembly for various platforms, I had already learned about a dozen other languages by then, and would later learn many more.

Sometime around 2000 I learned VHDL. In all of the material (two textbooks and numerous handouts) there was no mention of the obvious similarities to Ada. I wish somebody had just produced a textbook describing the additional features and nomenclatures that VHDL added to Ada -- That would have made learning it even easier. The obvious reason that nobody had done that is that I was among a very small minority of hardware people who already knew Ada, and it just wouldn't be useful to most people.

In all of my work, but especially in systems integration work, I've found that my knowledge of multiple domains has really helped me outperform my peers. Having an understanding of what the computer is doing at the machine level, as well as what the software is doing (or trying to do) can make the integration work easy.

More on-topic: I think it would be a great improvement to add some basic hardware elements to CS software courses, and to add some basic CS elements to EE courses. It would benefit everyone.