>While I appreciate what I learned from SICP, I think it's a difficult beginner's book because it's so damned boring
The purpose of SICP is not to entertain.
>The beginner wants to dive in and get their hands dirty. They don't want abstract theory. And because they don't want it, they won't learn it, no matter how much you want them to.
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>That's why you want a language that brings instant gratification and lets you go from "I want to learn to code" to "look at my shitty tic-tac-toe game" in as few days as possible.
An example would be the various BASIC dialects, and I hope we all know what's wrong with the ``programmers'' they've produced.
What is all this hype about "instant gratification" anyway? Has exposure to mediums such as television desensitized the population to the point where sitting down and reading a book is considered ``boring''?