It is indeed puzzling. Back in the day, I built myself a music playing device using TTL gates, eagerly studied what CPU's looked like inside and in general wanted to know how everything worked - even though it had no hope of replicating most of it.

Looking back, it was an ideal start to a 40 year career as a software engineer. And of course currently I'm reading "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI" because the urge to understand the machines I want to master and control hasn't gone away.