why, God, why?
I really loved that response :)
Edit: Here's a list of available Scheme implementations. SICP uses MIT/GNU Scheme, which uses an Emacs-like editor.
Scheme is a deliberately minimalist language, which is fairly accessible and easy to write your own implementation of. In fact, in SICP, you do that, a couple of times, writing first a Scheme interpreter, then extending it in various ways like adding logic programming capabilities, then you write a virtual machine and a compiler that compiles down to that virtual machine.
JavaScript is, well, a weird and warty language. You wouldn't want to try implementing JavaScript in an introductory CS class, and it's much less amenable to language extension like the logic programming variant of Scheme you implement in SICP.
But I notice that this translation of SICP into JavaScript doesn't got that far; it only goes up through Chapter 2 of SICP.
Ever looked at R6RS?
The main issues I have with R6RS are the library system (which I think is too complex, and it frustratingly adds an extra level of indentation as you need to wrap everything in one big expression), and some of the libraries in the standard library, like the I/O library, the Unicode library (which standardizes on such things as char-upcase and char-downcase, which are fairly useless in a Unicode context, without adding much that's actually useful).
R6RS is this kind of weird, awkward beast that's not sure what it's doing. It neither strips the language down to a minimal core, nor does it build up a comprehensive set of libraries containing all of the basics that people expect from standard libraries in a language these days.
Is Scheme really decreasing in usage? Sure, in recent years there have been high-profile moves to Python at MIT and UCB, but I don't know of any hard stats on worldwide Scheme usage. Not that it matters.
The fifth act of SICP is meta-linguistic abstraction, and among Javascript's merits it is not. SICP is no more a book about Scheme than Moby Dick is a whale tale.
I admire the effort, and understand the sentiment behind the project. I just think the authors are missing the big picture of SICP. In fairness, few of us are Ablesons or Sussmans.
Replace "casual dining" with "megacorporations" and you get an actual movie made in 2000 [1]. And, of course, that example is not unique [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171359/
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114279/
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/
[4] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184791/
[5] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265713/
[6] et cetera
[7] et cetera
[8] et cetera
[9] ad nauseum
[10] ad infinitum
You can use a subset of Common Lisp and the programs in SICP would mostly look the same when written in that CL subset.
I have a surprise for you: Scheme has warts, too.
Scheme is super-easy to set up these days.
Step 1: Download http://racket-lang.org/
Step 2: Follow the quick start guide: http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/
Step 3: Click "Run"
No "click through Visual Studio's project setup" phase, no "how do I open the text editor from IDLE" phase, no "open a command prompt" it's all right there.
This makes the environment and the language perfect for beginner students.