[eurolisp] [ANN] OOPSLA'05 CLOS tutorial

[Pascal Costanza]

OOPSLA'05 tutorial on generic functions and the CLOS Metaobject Protocol
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Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California
Sunday, October 16, 2005, 13:30 - 17:00
See http://p-cos.net/oopsla05-tutorial.html

Abstract.

The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) is unique in two ways.

+ In most OOP languages, methods belong to classes and are invoked by  
sending messages. In CLOS, methods belong to generic functions  
instead of classes, and those generic functions select and execute  
the correct method according to the types of the arguments they receive.

+ The CLOS Metaobject Protocol (MOP) specifies how its essential  
building blocks are to be implemented in CLOS itself. This allows  
extending its object model with metaclasses that change important  
aspects of CLOS for a well-defined scope.

This tutorial introduces these two notions. I will develop - live  
during the tutorial - the code for an interpreter for generic  
functions that performs selection and execution of methods. I will  
then discuss how that code can be extended to introduce, for example,  
multimethods and AOP-style advices, and sketch how generic functions  
are implemented efficiently in the "real" world. In the second part,  
I will illustrate the extensibility of the CLOS MOP by implementing -  
live - the (hashtable-based) Python object model as a metaclass.  
Other practical extensions based on the CLOS MOP are also sketched,  
like object-relational mappings, interfaces to foreign-language  
objects, and domain-specific annotations in classes.

The audience will learn about the basic concepts of generic functions  
and metaobject protocols. They will get the necessary insights and  
pointers to existing literature and online material to deepen their  
knowledge. The focus of the tutorial is not on technical details but  
on the general ideas. A good understanding of class-based OOP is  
required. Experience with Lisp may be helpful, but the tutorial is  
specifically targeted at non-Lispers.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions and/or suggestions.


Pascal