Love the quote (and totally agree with that), but I'm not sure MIT's decision to teach their freshers on a different track needs to apply to every kind of beginner. Needless to say, there would be a sizeable audience (of whatever background), who would find it extremely useful to learn the ideas in SICP.
All the more because they might not otherwise get the experience of rigorous constructionist thinking, and instead get too used to gluing libraries and slinging boilerplate.
More importantly, for many people, it is an eye-opening spiritual experience where they realize there is more to computing than they previously imagined, and then learn to expect more from their computing tools, and set higher goals for themselves.
All the more because they might not otherwise get the experience of rigorous constructionist thinking, and instead get too used to gluing libraries and slinging boilerplate.
More importantly, for many people, it is an eye-opening spiritual experience where they realize there is more to computing than they previously imagined, and then learn to expect more from their computing tools, and set higher goals for themselves.