We also learned about truth tables, AND, OR, NOT, NAND, and NOR gates. In one of our labs we actually built an adder. We had to pool our breadboards together so we had enough space to build the circuits. We eventually got it to work.
I have a lot of fun playing with Arduino microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi microcomputers, but I've never built a functional computer from the bear-bones chip up. This changed after I discovered a YouTube channel run by a guy named Ben Eater.
His whole channel is devoted to building a computer from the wires up. After finishing his big project he is following up with a simpler project where he builds a computer from the chips up. I bought a 6502 kit from him and have been following along with the project.