For SICP, you need a Scheme implementation (specifically, one that supports IEEE Scheme if you're using the second edition of the book -- R5RS, the most widely-

For SICP, you need a Scheme implementation (specifically, one that supports IEEE Scheme if you're using the second edition of the book -- R5RS, the most widely-implemented standard, is a strict superset of IEEE Scheme and works just fine with the code in the book, apart from the non-standard "picture language" stuff in chapter 2). I highly recommend using Racket with the DrRacket IDE and Neil van Dyke's SICP package from the Planet package repository. It's the easiest way to get up and running with an editor and a REPL, and it's got support for the "picture language" in chapter 2. You could also give it a shot with MIT Scheme -- I've got a feeling it's the implementation SICP (2e) was developed with. It's also got a built-in Emacs-like editor called EdWin. Launch the MIT Scheme REPL and type `(edwin)` to get at the editor. GNU Emacs has an extension called Geiser (available in MELPA) that works well to integrate with Racket and Guile. Otherwise, the cmuscheme package that ships with Emacs gives you rudimentary REPL integration with just about any Scheme interpreter (and quite a few Schemes, such as Gambit, come with packages to better integrate with cmuscheme and scheme-mode). If you're not an Emacs user and you're not willing to invest the hour or so it takes to get a handle on the basics, you can, of course, use any editor you want and use the `load` procedure (which, iirc, was omitted from IEEE, but most Schemes have it) at the REPL to import definitions from a file (or there's always good ol' copy+paste). If you want to learn Common Lisp rather than Scheme, you can check out "Successful Lisp" by David Lamkins and/or "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel, both of which are freely readable on the Web. You'll also want to keep the ANSI Common Lisp HyperSpec by Kent Pitman handy as a reference (also free on the Web). For this, you can grab virtually any ANSI Common Lisp implementation (GNU clisp, SBCL, Clozure CL, ABCL, etc.). GNU Emacs has excellent support via the SLIME package (available from MELPA), or the other-editor with the `load` function will work here, too. If you want to learn Emacs Lisp, GNU Emacs comes with an introductory programming book that uses Emacs Lisp, "An Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming" by Bob Chassel, and the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. As you might guess, GNU Emacs has the best editor support for Emacs Lisp, though Vim at least has syntax highlighting for Emacs Lisp. If you want to learn Clojure, the only freely-available book I'm aware of is "Clojure for the Brave and True" by Daniel Higginbotham, though I'm sure there are others. MELPA has the CIDER package available for Clojure support in GNU Emacs. I'm not familiar enough with Clojure at this point to know what the equivalent to `load` is, though. At this point, I've pretty much exhausted my usefulness on this matter. If you want to learn T, ISLISP, EuLisp, Le Lisp, Arc, or any other Lisp dialect for that matter, I can't help you. After all that, I highly recommend starting with SICP. It's really a great introduction to programming, and it also covers quite a few concepts that will likely be new to you even if you're already a programmer (mostly in chapters 3-5). (Disclaimer: although I like most of the Lisp dialects, my favorite is absolutely Scheme, so I may be biased ;)). Pick an (IEEE or R5RS) Scheme interpreter, have a glance over its documentation, and you should be good to go!