O-O Programming: The CLOS Perspective - looking for info on this book
Paolo Amoroso
Programming: The CLOS Perspective" (edited by Andreas Paepcke; MIT Press,
1993 - ISBN 0-262-16136-2). I am waiting for their price quote for a used
copy, which I should receive in a couple of weeks.
I've seen the book mentioned in the lists of references of several academic
papers, but the short review at Amazon doesn't tell much. The Lisp FAQ
provides some more info (the same available at the ALU site).
I would appreciate any kind of info about this book: pointers to reviews,
titles of chapters/contributions, opinions, etc. This would help me decide
whether it's interesting enough to justify its purchase despite a possibly
expensive price quote (but if the price is affordable, I'll probably buy
the book anyway).
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <amo...@mclink.it>
Erik Naggum
| I would appreciate any kind of info about this book: pointers to reviews,
| titles of chapters/contributions, opinions, etc. This would help me
| decide whether it's interesting enough to justify its purchase despite a
| possibly expensive price quote (but if the price is affordable, I'll
| probably buy the book anyway).
this is opinion. I found the book quite dated and the treatment of C++
was unfair even at the time it was printed. I remember reading this book
when I was beginning to get _real_ tired of C++ near the end of 1993, and
I was often puzzled by the comparisons with C++ where there were a number
of complex problems that C++ could have solved, but the authors didn't
see. I that was very annoying to me, and I thought it weakened the case
for CLOS. yet, here I am, just having completed a validator for the type
of the constructor arguments that interrogates the class definition via
the MOP, and it's _completely_ generic. such validation is trivial for
static _code_ in C++, but if you read the arguments from a potentially
hostile network client, you'd have to write a lot more code and duplicate
the type information in C++. stuff like that should have been part of
the comparisons, but aren't.
#:Erik
--
SIGTHTBABW: a signal sent from Unix to its programmers at random
intervals to make them remember that There Has To Be A Better Way.
Pierre Mai
> I have placed an order at Amazon for the out-of-print book "Object-Oriented
> Programming: The CLOS Perspective" (edited by Andreas Paepcke; MIT Press,
> 1993 - ISBN 0-262-16136-2). I am waiting for their price quote for a used
> copy, which I should receive in a couple of weeks.
Don't bet on that. I currently have orders for this book on hold via
Amazon, and via a number of out-of-print book shops, and I'll yet have
to get close to getting a copy. :-(
Regs, Pierre.
--
Pierre Mai <pm...@acm.org> http://home.pages.de/~trillian/
"One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-
bashing." [Microsoft memo, see http://www.opensource.org/halloween1.html]
Howard R. Stearns
>
> I have placed an order at Amazon for the out-of-print book "Object-Oriented
> Programming: The CLOS Perspective" (edited by Andreas Paepcke; MIT Press,
> 1993 - ISBN 0-262-16136-2). I am waiting for their price quote for a used
> copy, which I should receive in a couple of weeks.
>
> papers, but the short review at Amazon doesn't tell much. The Lisp FAQ
> provides some more info (the same available at the ALU site).
>
> titles of chapters/contributions, opinions, etc. This would help me decide
> whether it's interesting enough to justify its purchase despite a possibly
> expensive price quote (but if the price is affordable, I'll probably buy
> the book anyway).
>
(Disclaimer: I wrote some of the comments on the ALU pages, so do NOT
consider this an indpendent encorsement.)
INTRODUCTION
An Introduction CLOS
CLOS in Context: The Shape of the Design Space (by Bobrow, Gabriel and
JonL!)
THE METAOBJECT PROTOCOL
User-Level Language Crafting: Introducing the CLOS Metaobject Protocol
Metaobject Protocols: Why We Want Them and What Else They Can Do (by
Kiczales, Bobrow and
others)
Metaobject Programming CLOS (Giuseppe Attardi)
The Silica Window System: The Metalevel Approach Applied More Broadly
(Silica is an internal
implementation layer in CLIM. If I recall, this gave good examples
of class creation
on-the-fly, uses of change-class, protocols, and other uses of first
class metaobjects)
COMPARISONS WITH OTHER LANGUAGES (Whether truly fair or not, these give
the APPEARANCE of being
a non-flaming reasonable comparison, and do give a nice overview to
other languages to
CLOS programmers and, to a lesser extent, of CLOS to other
programmers.)
CLOS and C++
CLOS, Eiffel, and Sather (see
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~sather/Publications/tr-91-047.html)
CLOS and Smalltalk
CLOS USES and METHODOLOGY
Documenting Protocols in CLOS: Keeping the Promise of Reuse
CLOS & LispView: Users' Experiences Distilled (LispView is a CLOS
interface to Sun-specific X
windows)
Using CLOS to Implement a Hybrid Knowledge Representaiton Tool
IMPLEMENTATION
TICLOS: An Implementation for CLOS for the Explorer Family (Dussud.
Explorers were TI's
LispM)
Efficient Method Dispatch in PCL (Kiczales & Rodriquez. PCL was the
reference implementation
for CLOS. This paper gives a good overview of how to complete the
optimizations where AMOP
leaves off.)
Personally, I found the comparisons useful for my general understanding
of "the design space" and the last paper useful as an implementor. All
the rest were valuable mostly in that they were a nice, convenient,
pre-collected, pre-filtered set of good papers about issues involved in
CLOS programming. One needs to think about such things, and one set of
papers may be as good as another, but having them assembled for you is
nice.
As an example of both the "broadening your mind" and the "somewhat
dated" issues, if I recall correctly, I read the book on my way to a
Lisp conference where someone from PARC was presenting
MOP/Open-Implementation work. Some of the essays addressed issues he
did not cover (I don't recall which) and the presenter was somewhat
stumped by questions prompted by my reading.
In short, it may not change your life, but I do think its valuable
reading. I tend to recommend it along with AMOP as the quickest way to
read-your-way-into-the-right-mindset. (If you don't know where to begin
programming-your-way-in, which would be even better.)