[throwaway7645]

I also wasn't very impressed with it, but that could be because I already can code and this book focuses more on beginners than SICP. SICP starts off easy and gets hard fast...at least to me. I could've definitely missed some things in HTDP though as I didn't work it through from A-Z as I should have.

[agumonkey]

If you read other lispy books around the SICP era, they describe the issue with it: it's for math-loving engineering students. There were a few books that tried to focus on problem solving with computers without having to talk about irrational numbers.

HtDP does this very well. It helps structuring the information and the functions around it so you can solve your questions cleanly. Compared to most programming books around that are either too tied to a language or too focus on known algorithms I found it quite great.

[throwaway7645]

That makes sense