The first pass: Something pure like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, but more approachable for freshmen. And a more beginner-friendly language like Python is preferable. The key is to: 1) Focus on the idea of computation without any distractions. 2) Be less scary. I remember how I gave up C++ several times when I tried programming all by myself when I was a kid. A decade later I decided to try again, and it's fun because it's JavaScript and I can make useful stuff from day 1.
The second pass: Something like Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. It goes down to the implementation rabbit hole, don't skip the essential details and tools, making the students well equipped to deal with real-world problems.
I took a look, because I thought: "Do they even touch on recursion and all the things, that SICP does using Scheme, which usually in Python are inelegant or cumbersome? Lets check recursion."
They do have the examples at https://composingprograms.com/pages/17-recursive-functions.h... but no where one the whole page is the word "overflow" or "stack" even mentioned. Almost as if one does not want to mention, that recursion is a bad idea in Python in cases, where you do not know about recursion depth, because of the limitations of Python itself. So the book is teaching an approach, that often might not be a viable good solution, simply ignoring the problems of the chosen tool. On the surface the book looks like good teaching material, but these problems need to be stated, so that beginners know about them.
Don't get me wrong. This is already a much better learning experience than with most C/C++ tutorials, but it definitely leaves things to be improved.
A better idea might be two-pass learning:
The first pass: Something pure like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, but more approachable for freshmen. And a more beginner-friendly language like Python is preferable. The key is to: 1) Focus on the idea of computation without any distractions. 2) Be less scary. I remember how I gave up C++ several times when I tried programming all by myself when I was a kid. A decade later I decided to try again, and it's fun because it's JavaScript and I can make useful stuff from day 1.
The second pass: Something like Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. It goes down to the implementation rabbit hole, don't skip the essential details and tools, making the students well equipped to deal with real-world problems.