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by spacemanaki 5589 days ago
"Also, don't do all the exercises in SICP unless you feel like doing so. Some require domain knowledge that you frankly just don't need if your desire to learn these languages is web dev."

I disagree quite a bit... I think the exercises in SICP are really valuable and provide a lot of depth that just reading the text doesn't.

"Someone needs to do a SICP: The Web Dev Edition"

Why? If someone is really interested only in web development in a Lisp, they probably shouldn't go looking in SICP.

On the other hand, I believe that SICP has material that will make any programmer a better programmer, even if there are some examples that require "domain knowledge" (mostly math at the level of calculus). It's about the structure (building abstractions with procedures and data) and interpretation (how Lisp programs are actually executed by a machine) of computer programs, not "Web development with Lisp 101"

This is all from someone who recently finished reading SICP and lovingly doing as many exercises as possible, and is definitely of the same persuasion as the author of the OP, when he writes:

"That's where all the smuggest lisp weenies come from, or go eventually."

So take it with a grain of salt, I guess.