First of all, I want to mention that SICP is so much more than learning lisp. As a matter of fact, learning lisp only takes 10 minutes in the first lecture. The

First of all, I want to mention that SICP is so much more than learning lisp. As a matter of fact, learning lisp only takes 10 minutes in the first lecture. The rest of the course is about learning programming techniques (and _magic_ as they call it) with the explicit intent of learning to manage complexity. Even if you're completely fluent in lisp, taking this class will be massively mind opening. With this out of the way, what's so special about lisp? Where did it get this reputation for mind-expansion? Part of it is historical. 20-30 years ago, the industry was focused around _stricter_ (for lack of a better term) languages like C++ or Java, and lisp presented some features that were super powerful, like REPL, interactive debuggers, higher order functions, lexical scoping, lambdas, etc. Lots of mainstream languages have since adopted these features (python, perl, ruby, javascript, ...), making lisp a bit less exotic than it used to be. Still, today, there're some things that are unique to lisp that might be worth studying. The most important thing is macros. Macros are only possible because of the (lack of) syntax of lisp. It's a programming technique that consists of _programming your compiler_, for lack of a better term. It allows you to define a language specific to the domain you're working on. Pretty unique technique, and like all the other techniques, sometimes smart, sometimes useless, sometimes abused. I still believe it's worth learning, because understanding how macros work will explain a lot of things about the other tools you're using as a programmer. I hope this makes things a bit clearer. TLDR: A lot of what made lisp special is now available in other languages. Learning lisp is still worth it to expose you to _macros_. Regardless of how well you know lisp, going through SICP will be massively beneficial.