>>764
Yes, SICP dives into abstraction even before Chapter 1. I think it was one of the courses where students sat spending much of their effort on making concentrated, understanding faces, but then, years later their brains finally processed the course and they thought, "What a genius lecturer we had!"

Speaking from my personal experience related to "computer science", unrelated to SICP.

Also, who takes that niche between novice programmer and experienced one? How experienced? And how impatient? I had a friend for whom hacking in C and Asm was child's play, yet he greatly recommended reading this book.