Rating: 
Summary: Dry and Unhelpful
Review: Just because the author graduated from MIT doesn't mean it's great. Like most academic books, this book relishes on sophistication and pedantics for the sake of academics. While it is true that there are some important concepts here, the concepts themselves are a bit self-explanatory. For example, he talks about modularity and how important it is to break code down to parts. Everyone learns that in introductory CS. I even learned that by experience before I took a computer course.I would've excused the dry writing if he had presented some timeless and interesting concepts. But there aren't any.
I read a very dry book on algorithms, "Algorithms in C", and
I really found it very useful because it presented some interesting concepts and had some minimal source code examples
to follow. So I would not recommend this book at all. I didn't really get anything out of it.
Rating: 
Summary: An absolute classic. A 'must have' imho.
Review: So much can be learned by reading this book. I can't begin to describe how many essential (deep) concepts it conveys seemingly effortlessly. If you haven't read the book, or used the Scheme language, it's virtually guaranteed you will learn a lot by doing so. MIT Scheme is available for free via ftp, and makes a perfect companion to this text.
Rating:
Summary: what rust is to steel
Review: I'd like to point out the fact that this book gets mixed
reviews for a very good reason. It's exceedingly boring and
much of the information is completely worthless as far as
computer science and programming in general is concerned. I read this text when I already had some introductory data
structures and algorithms knowledge, plus C++ experience.
I couldn't believe some of the dumb things this book passed
off as good programming, not to mention how very inconvenient
Scheme is. So there you are, these authors present either simple ideas which
everyone already knows, or they present interesting things in
such a way that no one can understand them, and on top of that,
they use a language which is inappropriate for most of the
algorithms they show. If you pick up a book like "Algorithms"
by Cormen, et.al. you'll see everything is in C-like pseudocode,
and I don't know anyone who was able to successfully code things
like Djikstra's algorithm in Scheme, and yet this is typical of
what programmers encounter in practice. In short, this book is pedantic drivel, only of interest to
hardcore computer science majors who don't really care about
coding efficiency and elegance, and would rather waste time
formalizing basic ideas mathematically.
Rating:
Summary: what Feynman is to physics
Review: This book is to Computer Science what the Feynman Lecture notes are to physics: an introductory text that could reshape the mind of the average PdD. It's not about Lisp, it's not about Scheme, it's about computing at the most fundamental levels. If you're an experienced programmer, it will change your way of thinking forever. If you're a novice, it will set you down the right path. Read it and work through every problem. Repeat every few years.
Rating:
Summary: definitely 5 stars plus plus.
Review: All I want to say is: I got this book one and a half year ago, later I bought another
copy so I can read it both at home and at office whenever I am
in good mood to read it. But still I can only say I understood a small part of it, so I will continue read it... It is this book that introduce me into computer Sciences, not programming(although now I knew more than a dozen). It opens up a door(or a huge hole) for my mind. I can say that i end up thinking differently after reading SICP.
Rating:
Summary: The best introduction to software engineering
Review: The best textbook ever written to teach computer programming to college freshmen, though somewhat difficult for the non-mathematically minded. Exposes the basics of programming in a clear, elegant way, starting from simple procedural and structural abstraction up to virtual machine, interpreter and compiler design, through object, concurrent or logical oriented ways of programming. Exercises are rather stimulating, and actually doing them is more than half the substance of the book: it's not a book one merely reads, it's a books one does. Although intended for students of Computer Science, this course should appeal students of all engineering branches, because the principles taught are not only relevant to the art of computer programming, but also to the design of all kinds of complex systems. If you need only one introductory book about the subject, try this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Twisted, So Very Twisted
Review: This book is like a puzzle that has an organized solution which requires some extensive work to delineate. My impression is part of the challenge and the allure of this book is that one can perceive only a part of the nuances of the complex organization in the presentation, and what seems frustrating is the authors have apparently built extensive, concise and elegant structure into their presentation. From the parts of the book I could understand, they have helped immensely in my comprehension of C++ and why certain aspects of that language are structured the way it is. The presentation is also more universal than programming because it evokes concepts common to how people organize fundamental mathematical thought, language, and also object-oriented thought, in general. I would not enjoy being tested on this material in a time limited course as a freshman in college -- I think it is quite intense and would fry most people under pressure. But as a simple reader who would like to crack open the puzzle of computer language and human thought, this book is a lot of fun. Hats off to those of you who used this book as text. You all deserve T-shirts emblazoned with "I survived CSxxx". I am not worthy.
Rating:
Summary: This book really deserves two ratings...
Review: As is probably obvious from the sharply divided ratings, this book doesn't appeal to everybody. For me, it deserves the full five stars. This was the *only* textbook I kept from college. My leanings are more toward the theoretical, and I'm more interested in conceptual books (like the GOF patterns book) than implementation books (like, say, K&R). I think that this is a reasonable guideline for evaluating whether or not this book is worth reading... So, I give this book five stars in terms of a theoretically oriented read, and maybe two stars in terms of a practically oriented read.
Rating:
Summary: A classic of computer science
Review: This is the best introduction to programming ever written. It's not easy, but it will give you a good introduction to some of the fundamental concepts of computer science: procedural and data abstraction, algorithmic complexity, recursion, interpretation, etc. If you want to be a Java hack, buy "Java in 21 Days". But if you want to be a real computer scientist, read this slowly and carefully.
Rating:
Summary: I Liked This Book a Whole Lot
Review: It's amazing how polarized the opinions on this book are. I personally consider it a landmark book, but that's almost irrelevant given the controversy created by the reviews I've seen here. I've read this book when I was already an experienced programmer and I can say it was truly inspirational. I can imagine it can scare beginners, or render the snooty ones angry. I think the best way to figure out what *you* would think of the book is to take a look at it yourself. This is now easy because the full text is now online - you can find it easily by searching "sicp" with google. The current address is mitpress dot mit dot edu slash sicp.
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