i have to disagree. while SICP is a brilliant book that i used
to teach myself programming from (and nothing i learned as an
undergraduate really went beyond), these days, i'd recommend
Ocaml to beginners. scheme has one VERY BIG problem: it is
untyped (in the sense of static type checking). thinking about
types properly is such an important factor in becoming a good
programmer. it seems to me that there is little one can learn
from scheme that one couldn't learn from ocaml, and probably
learn better.

martin