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The concepts in SICP are timeless. There's nothing to be lost going through that book. There are video lectures you can use to accompany the book: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090 Also, I highly recommend the courses How to Code: Simple Data amd How to Code: Complex Data on edX that are based on HtDP.
I took the course in 1999.
And yes the material is just as relevant today.
And that is just taking advantage of 1% of it.
SICP is an amazing book that will make you a better programmer, but might not help you with the task of writing better professional Python programs. If you aspire to understand computing systems from first-principles, there's no better resource that SICP. I've read it multiple times and I learn something new each time. Do the exercises too!
It's certainly not required reading to be a successful programmer in the 21st century, but like SICP, it offers a different way of looking at things that may help influence some of your decisions on how to build something.
What is HtDP?
Since, astonishingly, neither full title is mentioned in the post or the comments: SICP = Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... HtDP = How to Design Programs: https://htdp.org/ Sometimes I think gratuitous use of acronyms (initialisms for the pedants) has been the biggest impediment to learning throughout my career.
I think IT reached bottom when we started using numeronyms like L10n (localization) or K8s (Kubernetes).
Since, astonishingly, neither full title is mentioned in the post or the comments: SICP = Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... HtDP = How to Design Programs: https://htdp.org/ Sometimes I think gratuitous use of acronyms (initialisms for the pedants) has been the biggest impediment to learning throughout my career.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your only critique is that SICP is old. Computing power and performance are irrelevant to SICP.
Not only that. Now precisely because multicore is the only path to follow when we reach the end of the Moore’s law, we need more than ever functional programming. Is no coincidence that there are so much new languages that are trying to use those concepts, including a big revival of Lisp.
Background: SICP was the textbook for my undergrad intro to CS class, though I was already a self-taught programmer at the time. SICP provided a different way of understanding programming. I enjoyed the class, did well, and became a big fan of Scheme for quite some time. But the text was written for a different era, one dominated by C, PASCAL, and COBOL and when parallel programming was rare. In a time where almost a…
Power tools are accelerators, not fundamental tools. Your analogy of woodworking is excellent, but I believe you draw the wrong conclusion from it.