Are you saying that you completed a CS degree without writing programs on a computer?
There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?
Yes, and MIT (correctly) dropped Sussman and Abelson's head-in-the-clouds intro class in favor of a practical one that actually teaches you about computers.
I took Abelson and Sussman's class myself, as an MIT undergrad, just before it was phased out. I got a lot out of it, because I had already been using UNIX and writing code for years at home as a teenager. If you didn't have that background it would be useless to you.
"Computer science isn't about computers" is a similar statement to "English composition isn't about pens or keyboards." If you can't use the tools, you won't get very much work done. A writer is fortunate that our grade schools generally teach handwriting and/or typing - but if they didn't, a college degree on how to tell compelling stories and understand the monomyth isn't going to help you actually write books. Computer science isn't about using editors or shells, but if you don't come in with knowledge of editors or shells, you won't get very much done.
'Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that “computer science” is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers.' -- from the preface to SICP.
There's a similar quotation often attributed to Dijkstra, but it seems doubtful whether he actually said it.
There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?