> Lisp itself is trivial. Anything about an actual programming language is trivial in the book. I think by design. In a way, the book isn't even really using

> Lisp itself is trivial. Anything about an actual programming language is trivial in the book. I think by design. In a way, the book isn't even really using the Scheme language. It uses a seemingly makeshift language to help decompose a thought-process into uniform and logical elements. Then, if you throw some syntax at it (using a bunch of parenthesis), you can actually make a computer execute your thought process, almost as a convenient coincidence (which is also why the actual language doesn't matter. It's just that all other languages are more cluttered when trying to capture the concepts of the thought-processes as presented). One of the stated goals in the book is to blur the line between procedures and data. I believe that if you do SICP well, it blurs the line between data, procedures, and conceptual thought. If you can express a thought well enough to give it a name, to "define" it, you can control it (or "them", depending on whether you are depending on a procedure or spirits to do your bidding). You don't walk away from SICP an expert Lisp programmer. You walk away from SICP wondering if yin-yang is a fun joke by the authors, some weird coincidence, or actually a governing principle of a Universe which itself is written in Lisp. You also walk away wondering why people insist on calling OO a "paradigm".