This post is a treasure. I have too many itches to scratch and would want to know at least a ballpark figure for the time investment.
One suggestion for the already complete and detailed post: what is the personal/professional gain you get for your time investment? In this case maybe: „program design became clearer after having worked through SICO.“ or „I can discuss design more formally now“ or just „It was interesting and everyone talked about it, so I needed to know“
I would think some parts of the book are more valuable than others. That goes for every book including classics like TAOCP and the compiler dragon book.
It would be interesting to know what parts are pure gold and worth deep study and which parts can be skimmed or consulted as a reference.
I was lucky enough to read it during my studies and to have a teacher that made very good Slides focusing on the most interesting parts.
I think finding someone that guide you through the book allows to go way faster than alone.
Now, while the concepts were extremely illuminating, I think following the book but doing the exercises in haskell is also a nice path. Haskell was another lecture following the one on SICP by the same teacher, and it uses most of the same ideas, sometimes formulated a little differently, but on a more modern language.
I still remember my exam where we received ~6 pages double column of printed lisp, no comments. The code was a compiler, and we needed to change it so that it can jump back in time using call with cc. Difficult to do in 3h and on paper but very fun.
One suggestion for the already complete and detailed post: what is the personal/professional gain you get for your time investment? In this case maybe: „program design became clearer after having worked through SICO.“ or „I can discuss design more formally now“ or just „It was interesting and everyone talked about it, so I needed to know“