I know two people who worked through SICP. One of them had so much fun with it they worked through it twice cover to cover in their free time. In both cases they reported to me that SICP was quite a revelation to them, since Scheme is about as simple a practical programming language as one can get other than maybe stack languages like Forth. That is, while [un-|simply-]typed lambda calculus and Turing machines are simpler models of computation, I wouldn't exactly call them practical models of computation. In one case they said that it really gave them real purchase on what computation really means. That is, what is it really about when one strips off all the type theory, build tools, and dependency hell. My sense is that SICP is better left to after getting a couple years of experience doing computer programming to appreciate though for most people though.
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