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I think I'd recommend reading Sonya Keene's Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS first though. I really don't know any othe

I think I'd recommend reading Sonya Keene's Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS first though. I really don't know any other ways of learning all the things like method combinations and the like that make the MOP so powerful. All the CLOS tutorials I am aware of lack a real discussion of these features of CLOS.

mikelevins 3y ago
Agreed. It's easier to learn how to do practical programming with CLOS from Keene's book. AMOP is more useful for those who want to know more about how things work under the hood, or who maybe want to build their own implementation of CLOS or something similar, and easier to understand after you've absorbed Keene.
r9550684 3y ago
unrelated to your point, Sonya keene's book is the only one I know that was authored and typeset using Symbolics's in-house publishing system Concordia. (besides symbolics documentation sets of course) Concordia (and its display component document examiner) had a pretty novel hypertext approach to authoring. all the content was made up of individual notes, that you could link together either with explicit links, or implicit one-follows-the-other links. I don't know if that's how Sonya used it, but when I authored some documents using Concordia, I discovered that it was very easy to focus on addressing specific points in almost a throwaway fashion. write a note on some subject you want to address. if you don't like it, write another take on the same subject. now you have the option to put either note into the book flow, refine them in parallel, and defer editorial decisions to the very end. the process is very reminiscent of explorative programming in lisp, so in other words symbolics people figured out how to write books in the same way as they write their code. ultimate vertical integration.
- lispm 3y ago
  "Lisp Lore: A Guide to Programming the Lisp Machine" by Bromley&Lamson was also written using Concordia AFAIK. The Symbolics documentation also has Jensen&Wirth "Pascal User Manual and Report" and Harbison & Steele, C: A Reference Manual.
- bmitc 3y ago
  > Symbolics's in-house publishing system Concordia What you describe regarding Concordia sounds very intriguing. I can search for information on Concordia, but do you have any goto references (books, papers, videos) on it that you'd recommend?
  - lispm 3y ago
    I once recorded a demo video, running Concordia on an actual Symbolics Lisp Machine. https://vimeo.com/83886950 https://vimeo.com/83886950
    - bmitc 3y ago
      Thank you!
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - amno 3y ago
      Cool video, interesting. Looks though like a very complicated way of creating and entering the content, compared to just typing in a buffer with some markup language. When I saw the video first I thought it was just textual hyperlinks, sort of what we with clickable text in Emacs. Info and help-mode are Emacs apps that uses it quite heavy. But then I looked up Concordia on Wikipedia, and I see it has same ancestor as texinfo :). But very interesting to see, I'll watch your other videos when I have more time, it is a bit of history. Thanks for recording them and uploading videos. Is that machine still alive and running, or did you record it on your Linux port?
      - lispm 3y ago
        One doesn't need to use the menus, one can use the keyboard commands. The UI provides several ways to interact: key commands, interactive command line and menus. > I see it has same ancestor as texinfo Genera comes with a Scribe-based markup language and formatter. > Is that machine still alive and running, or did you record it on your Linux port? I made this video years ago on Lisp Machine. The new emulator for the Mac & Linux is many times faster and runs silent on something like a MacBook... Thus it's ,uch more convenient to use that for a demo, unless the software does not run there. The emulator has its own native code format and, for example, lacks emulation of the console hardware (graphics hardware).
Jach 3y ago
The book "Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective" is a better intro than just diving into AMOP. It's essentially a collection of papers, but it really helps contextualize a lot of the early design thinking, gives a gentle introduction to the MOP, compares CLOS with other languages including C++, and showcases some application uses back then.

mikelevins 3y ago

Agreed. It's easier to learn how to do practical programming with CLOS from Keene's book. AMOP is more useful for those who want to know more about how things work under the hood, or who maybe want to build their own implementation of CLOS or something similar, and easier to understand after you've absorbed Keene.

r9550684 3y ago

unrelated to your point, Sonya keene's book is the only one I know that was authored and typeset using Symbolics's in-house publishing system Concordia. (besides symbolics documentation sets of course) Concordia (and its display component document examiner) had a pretty novel hypertext approach to authoring. all the content was made up of individual notes, that you could link together either with explicit links, or implicit one-follows-the-other links. I don't know if that's how Sonya used it, but when I authored some documents using Concordia, I discovered that it was very easy to focus on addressing specific points in almost a throwaway fashion. write a note on some subject you want to address. if you don't like it, write another take on the same subject. now you have the option to put either note into the book flow, refine them in parallel, and defer editorial decisions to the very end. the process is very reminiscent of explorative programming in lisp, so in other words symbolics people figured out how to write books in the same way as they write their code. ultimate vertical integration.

lispm 3y ago
"Lisp Lore: A Guide to Programming the Lisp Machine" by Bromley&Lamson was also written using Concordia AFAIK. The Symbolics documentation also has Jensen&Wirth "Pascal User Manual and Report" and Harbison & Steele, C: A Reference Manual.
bmitc 3y ago
> Symbolics's in-house publishing system Concordia What you describe regarding Concordia sounds very intriguing. I can search for information on Concordia, but do you have any goto references (books, papers, videos) on it that you'd recommend?
- lispm 3y ago
  I once recorded a demo video, running Concordia on an actual Symbolics Lisp Machine. https://vimeo.com/83886950 https://vimeo.com/83886950
  - bmitc 3y ago
    Thank you!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - amno 3y ago
    Cool video, interesting. Looks though like a very complicated way of creating and entering the content, compared to just typing in a buffer with some markup language. When I saw the video first I thought it was just textual hyperlinks, sort of what we with clickable text in Emacs. Info and help-mode are Emacs apps that uses it quite heavy. But then I looked up Concordia on Wikipedia, and I see it has same ancestor as texinfo :). But very interesting to see, I'll watch your other videos when I have more time, it is a bit of history. Thanks for recording them and uploading videos. Is that machine still alive and running, or did you record it on your Linux port?
    - lispm 3y ago
      One doesn't need to use the menus, one can use the keyboard commands. The UI provides several ways to interact: key commands, interactive command line and menus. > I see it has same ancestor as texinfo Genera comes with a Scribe-based markup language and formatter. > Is that machine still alive and running, or did you record it on your Linux port? I made this video years ago on Lisp Machine. The new emulator for the Mac & Linux is many times faster and runs silent on something like a MacBook... Thus it's ,uch more convenient to use that for a demo, unless the software does not run there. The emulator has its own native code format and, for example, lacks emulation of the console hardware (graphics hardware).

Jach 3y ago

The book "Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective" is a better intro than just diving into AMOP. It's essentially a collection of papers, but it really helps contextualize a lot of the early design thinking, gives a gentle introduction to the MOP, compares CLOS with other languages including C++, and showcases some application uses back then.