I would disagree. One of my biggest revelations and improvements to my programming from reading SICP was the concept that as soon as you start to declare funct

I would disagree. One of my biggest revelations and improvements to my programming from reading SICP was the concept that as soon as you start to declare functions you are starting to create an abstraction over hte host language and as a result a new language for your problem will emerge. This begs the question: what is the benefit of treating nearly all program writing as "language design". Using that frame of reference I can use it to spot where my abstraction/program design breaks down when I start using too much "raw programming language" to glue between different parts of my program together. That suggests I have a gap in how my domain objects relate to each other.