As someone who's read SICP when first starting out and re-reading it and re-watching the lectures much much later - I can say that 95% of the value of SICP flew

As someone who's read SICP when first starting out and re-reading it and re-watching the lectures much much later - I can say that 95% of the value of SICP flew completely over my head when I was first learning. I remembered catch phrases like 'assignment is bad', only to be led down the 'functional programming' cult years later because it reminded me of sicp. Building up entire systems from first principles is quite beautiful and illuminating - once you've used existing systems and began to wonder how they came to be. For most people - I don't think they're really that curious. University is not structured to give you the time to go deep or be curious - you're busy doing assignments, readings and studying for tests. SICP is a gem for those who are lucky to have a few months to really go down the rabbit hole. For everyone else, it'll likely feel like needless torture or 'wow, that's cool and I don't have time to explore it any further' at best.