Reddit reviews Object-Oriented Programming in COMMON LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS

Some context, I've been living in this house for about 3 years now, my girlfriend and i moved in to take care of the owner of the house. Turns out that he was a big lisp / scheme hacker back in the 80s-90s and had developed a lot of cutting edge tech in his hay day. Anyway, these books have been hiding in his library downstairs...

It was like finding a bunch of hidden magical scrolls of lost knowledge :)

edit: I will compile a list of the books later. I'm out doing 4th of July things.

update: List of books

• Lisp: Style and Design by Molly M. Miller and Eric Benson
  ISBN: 1-55558-044-0
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language Second Edition by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 1-55558-042-4
  
  
• The Little LISPer Trade Edition by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
  ISBN: 0-262-56038-0
  
  
• Common LISPcraft by Robert Wilensky
  ISBN: 0-393-95544-3
  
  
• Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp by Sonya E. Keene
  ISBN: 0-201-17589-4
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman w/Julie Sussman
  ISBN: 0-07-000-422-6
  
  
• ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham
  ISBN: 0-13-370875-6
  
  
• Programming Paradigms in LISP by Rajeev Sangal
  ISBN: 0-07-054666-5
  
  
• The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, and Daniel G. Bobrow
  ISBN: 0-262-11158-6
  
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig
  ISBN: 1-55860-191-0
  
  
• Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel
  ISBN: 1-59059-239-5
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 0-932376-41-X
  
  
• Anatomy of Lisp by John Allen
  ISBN: 0-07-001115-X
  
  
• Lisp Objects, and Symbolic Programming by Robert R. Kessler
  ISBN: 0-673-39773-4
  
  
• Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems by Richard P. Gabriel
  ISBN: 0-262-07093-6
  
  
• A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp by Deborah G. Tatar
  ISBN: 0-932376-87-8
  
  
• Understanding CLOS The Common Lisp Object System by Jo A. Lawless and Molly M. Miller
  ISBN: 0-13-717232-X
  
  
• The Common Lisp Companion by Tim D. Koschmann
  ISBN: 0-417-50308-8
  
  
• Symbolic Computing with Lisp and Prolog by Robert A. Mueller and Rex L. Page
  ISBN: 0-471-60771-1
  
  
• Scheme and the Art of Programming by George Springer and Daniel P. Friedman
  ISBN: 0-262-19288-8
  
  
• Programming In Scheme by Michael Eisenberg
  ISBN: 0-262-55017-2
  
  
• The Schematics of Computation by Vincent S. Manis and James J. Little
  ISBN: 0-13-834284-9
  
  
• The Joy of Clojure by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser
  ISBN: 1-935182-64-1
  
  
• Clojure For The Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham
  ISBN: 978-1-59327-591-4
  
  
  
  

The Keene book is good.

There are also some good essays about CLOS on RPG's website.

Finally, the AMOP book shows that CLOS is simple at its core.

I would also add Object-oriented Programming in Common LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS.

If you want to learn lisp I would read the following books in the order listed.

• The Little Schemer
  
  Best introduction to recursion anywhere.
  
  
• Practical Common Lisp
  
  For some really useful things that Common Lisp makes easy.
  
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence
  
  This book will show you how to write good lisp programs.
  
  
• Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp
  
  This is a good introduction to Common Lisp's object system CLOS.

Thanks.

Are MOP and CLOS the same thing?

Now there are three books mentioned

• The Art of the Meta Object Protocol
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-COMMON-LISP-Programmers/dp/0201175894
  
• Putting Metaclasses to Work, by Ira Forman and Scott Danforth
  
  What are your suggestions to read which books in what order? My post started from understanding the different object models in Python and Smalltalk.

Yes. Here are some papers about it if you're interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20050510122857/http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~trc/languages.html They refer to earlier work which again refers to Lisp and a precursor of CLOS.

The Art of the Meta Object Protocol describes the MOP. If you're looking for a general book about CLOS then you could e.g. have a look at https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-COMMON-LISP-Programmers/dp/0201175894.

On Linux I recommend grabbing the latest SBCL. If you really need to stay on Windows, then CLISP is fine.

You can edit code in any text editor, so simply choose your favorite one on any platform. You will find most of the main CL nerds use emacs and SLIME as their "IDE".

As for books, there are no good books on Lisp. I'm serious, every last one of them sucks ass out loud. But here is a list, taken in order from beginner level (that's you) to CHICK MAGNET (that's me).

• Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation
  
• Land of Lisp
  
• Common LISPcraft
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming
  
• Object Oriented Programming in Common Lisp
  
• On Lisp
  
• Let Over Lambda
  
• The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
  
  Good luck, it's a good job you're getting started young. But CL will ruin you for other languages FYI.
  

> The basic point of this was to gear your mind to think in terms of objects, methods, and the interactions between them.

Well, it depends on the problem domain. Sometimes, it's a good start to write down the nouns and verbs of your spec, and relate them to each other. That does not necessary lead to an OO design, especially if you concentrate on the verbs.

> how can us OO-thinkers learn how to "structure the solution differently"?

I can only recommend to go by example and look at existing designs. CLOS will show you a more "functional" OO style, and you'll loose some misconceptions from other OO languages. Keene's book is a good introduction. Otherwise look at papers from the FP community.

• Sonya Keene, Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS
  
• John Hughes, Why Functional Programming Matters
  
• Paul Hudak, Mark Jones, Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. Awk vs. ...
  An Experiment in Software Prototyping Productivity
  
• John Hughes, The Design of a Pretty-printing Library, after that read Wadler's A Prettier Printer
  
• Some others of the Functional Pearls
  
  However, I do not agree with all of the opinions of the papers cited. In particular, I find the "purely functional" approach a waste of time. So, keep on eye on the Kool Aid, and judge for yourself.
  
  

This cover is more greenish, but has some dark blue to it.

https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-COMMON-LISP-Programmers/dp/0201175894