Yes. 61A at Berkeley was nominally based on SICP. Berkeley has since abandoned the book and the class is now taught in Python. MIT 6.01 has abandoned the book as well and recreated the course using Python as well. Scheme was wonderfully elegant but then we never used it again which was annoying. If the choice is between Scheme knowing I'd never use it again and Python then I'd take Python.
We never had any readings from SICP. It sat on the shelf like an unread bible. I went back to it much later but I didn't like its conception of computer science. I compare it directly to Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms and it just didn't inspire me at all whereas FA did. I'll grant that I can't imagine a freshman course using FA, mostly because assembly language is very much de-emphasized.
However, I'll second someone else's comment about the beauty of the typesetting of this edition. And I really liked Scheme. But neither 61A nor SICP are touchstones for me.
I feel these moves are part of a general move towards "industry ready" skills and away from fundamentals earlier and earlier in computer science programs (even prestigious ones). Whether that's a good or bad thing is a separate discussion from your opinions on SICP.
What's your personal experience with SICP? It sounds like you were a student in one of these courses ("we never used it again") but you also wrote "We never had any readings from SICP." so I'm not sure what you took and when. Did you work through SICP and still find it overrated?
Sussman is still teaching SICP through his Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming [1].
The Python course happened clearly due to politics and popular appeal. Sussman expressed his disappointment about it multiple times. Abelson did the same in the interview that's linked in this thread.
It is sad but a good example of how far the academic institution has fallen in this century. Ultimately it is the students that really lose out.
We never had any readings from SICP. It sat on the shelf like an unread bible. I went back to it much later but I didn't like its conception of computer science. I compare it directly to Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms and it just didn't inspire me at all whereas FA did. I'll grant that I can't imagine a freshman course using FA, mostly because assembly language is very much de-emphasized.
However, I'll second someone else's comment about the beauty of the typesetting of this edition. And I really liked Scheme. But neither 61A nor SICP are touchstones for me.