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.

Sp let me see if i have this straight.

Where and when the Real World(tm) needs the sort of specialized abstractions Scheme has they bolt it on well after the fact, and only where needed and the bare minimum of abstractions at that.

I getchas.

QED: abstraction isn't terribly useful except for obscure and arcane things.


As >>60 said, "cool story, bro"