IJCAI CLOS Tutorial etc.

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

Many people have asked about how to go about learning to use CLOS.  This
message summarizes some of the available information, particularly that
with which I am most familiar.  Please feel free to send other messages
that supplement this information.


This year at IJCAI, Danny Bobrow and I will be giving a 4 hour CLOS
tutorial.  This year's tutorial differs from last year's in a number
of ways, in particular the sections on performance and use of the
metaobject protocol have been considerably expanded.  Other sections
were removed to make room for the new stuff.

In general, this tutorial provides an introduction to many different
facets of CLOS.  Basic programming, use of the initialization protocol,
mixins and modularity, shared and local slots, method combination, class
redefinition, multi-methods, performance, meta-level programs etc.  I
believe this tutorial is valuable to anyone wanting to learn about CLOS
in general, or some part of CLOS they don't yet fully understand.


Many people will want to get more detailed instruction about programming
in CLOS.  I believe that all of the major Lisp vendors now offer CLOS
classes.  These vary from 2 to 5 days in length.


In addition, there are at least two books that provide excellent
information on programming in CLOS.  These are Sonya Keene's "Object
Oriented Programming in Common Lisp -- A Programmer's Guide to CLOS" and
the third edition of Patrick Winston and Berthold Horn's "Lisp".
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