In my experience, SICP's main effect was developing "analysis" muscle. I remember reading first 3 chapters and realizing that we are starting to write fairly co

In my experience, SICP's main effect was developing "analysis" muscle. I remember reading first 3 chapters and realizing that we are starting to write fairly complex stuff but still our language doesn't even have assignments let alone for loops or other bread and butter of programming. It's that moment, it dawns on you what computer program really means. It's not prescription of step-by-step instructions, but set of ideas that come together, compose with each other and make a whole that is far bigger than sum of small pieces. In SICP, you actually start at "atomic" level to build real world objects. I think this exercise is still relevant at least in that way and chances are that SICP readers are better at grasping and using abstractions.