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Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman isn't really about Scheme or even programming—it's about computation as a medium for expressing ideas. The way they build up from simple primitives to interpreters to register machines fundamentally shaped how I think about abstraction and the layering of meaning.

These posts carry that influence forward: the closure property (combining things yields the same kind of thing), abstraction barriers, procedures as first-class citizens, and the deep insight that good abstractions come from understanding the algebraic structure of what you're computing.

The book: Full text (free) | MIT lectures