SICP Considered Harmful

Its not relevant to the industry, its badly written, and its considered harmful and detrimental to developing the skills of new programmers.  It should only be recommended for its historical value, so pretty much only if you plan to have career in academia.  Instead please recommend a book such as 'The C programming language' to newbies or ex web-designers looking to get a good foundation on the fundamentals.

I don't want to see SICP mentioned around here anymore or you will be reprimanded, please follow the lead of computer science institutions around the world and don't teach SICP anymore.  Thanks, and welcome to 2009.

>>21
Lisp isn't slow. Some compilers produce very good code (look at SBCL or CCL). It can be faster than Java and with proper type declaration, as fast as C. Next time you claim that, do your own benchmarks and learn your compiler well. You can examine disassembled code with (disassemble #'function) to see the generated code.