[jdietrich]

This isn't a question of whether we should teach SICP, it's a question of whether it's an appropriate introduction.

I love SICP, I think it's one of the most brilliant didactic texts ever written, but I think it's a terrible starting point for most students.

To me it appears that SICP is used as a trial by ordeal, intended in large part to scare off 'unsuitable' candidates. SICP is all about the beauty and interest of computation for it's own sake, but it doesn't really engage with solving the kinds of problems most software is written for. I think we're inadvertently dissuading people who would make great programmers, but who see computer science as a means rather than an end and need to relate algorithms and data structures to practical problems.

There is clearly value in CS for its own sake and academics are obviously inclined towards this, but I think dismissing the practical application of CS is unhelpful. If we segregate programmers into 'Computer Scientists' and 'Software Engineers', we lose the most precious part - the bit in between, where radical ideas meet great engineering.

I want to see more diversity in computing and I think SICP as an introductory course is a serious hindrance to that aim. We don't teach children to read and write by starting with linguistic theory. I think we should teach software the same way - start with Dick and Jane and work our way up to lambda calculus.