I think that people just can’t make the software --> hardware jump. Like they understand what machine code is, and what CPU registers are, but can’t understand how a CPU with baked in hardware instructions (i.e. a seemingly fully deterministic piece of hardware) can drive transistors to high or low voltages in a seemingly random way.

The key is to see all software as hardware, and to envision the CPU as many many light bulb switches, with some wired into each other, creating flip/flopping latches.

Once you get the idea of a flipflop, you can maybe then start