[ken]

I don't know anyone who first read this book outside of college. Its concepts aren't exactly directly applicable to typical work. If you're given the task to build something in Javascript for work, it's probably not a metacircular evaluator or a register machine simulator, or even a closure-based object system.

I'm curious who's reading SICP who finds it difficult to grok in Scheme, or more useful in Javascript. What are you doing in the industry that familiar syntax is top priority?

I would think that other books, specific to Javascript, would be a much better fit for people writing pretty much anything in Javascript.

[tiborsaas]

That might change now. Someone might pick this up after completing a few JavaScript chapters in a JS specific book. I haven't read the book yet so I can't comment on the concepts, but based on your list it's a great resource for any newbie programmer, especially to those who are self taught like me.

> What are you doing in the industry that familiar syntax is top priority?

The question is more like: "Do I want to invest time into learning a new language just to read and comprehend new and interesting concepts?".

With endless knowledge out there, I usually gravitate towards the least friction.

> I would think that other books, specific to Javascript, would be a much better fit for people writing pretty much anything in Javascript.

I don't think of this book as the ultimate JavaScript book. It just uses it as the most accessible language out there, and that matters a lot imho.

[goto11]

It is a great book for self-taught programmers. But the book is about programming language concepts and paradigms, and explores these though the development of multiple languages, interpreters and compilers. It is fundamental to the book that you have to learn a bunch of small languages. Scheme just makes it really easy to implement new languages.

[tiborsaas]

That makes sense looking at it from this angle.