I picked up SICP expecting to read something really interesting or profound with the way it's been hyped up over the years however it's more of a how-to manual for working with Scheme/LISP and frankly that didn't interest me. Unfortunately most people have come to accept that LISP isn't a particularly effective way of programming even if some people get really excited by the idea of mutable and interchangeable data and code it's just not as powerful as they make it out to be and the obfuscation of program flow and execution and the lack of separation/delineation of data and code proves to be a hinderance more often than it is helpful. This doesn't discount LISP's contribution to computer science historically and how it's influenced modern day language design over the years, just that in my opinion LISP/SCHEME is more of a historical curiosity than a modern day guide to effective programming. (And certainly one that has no place as the introductory class at MIT). Anyway I've said something negative about SICP so prepare for this to be downvoted to the bottom :)