I went to see if there was anything like ActiveRecord for Lisp, because, well, that's a pretty metaprogramming-heavy domain. What do I get as the first google hit? A forum post asking about that, http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Lisp/comp.lang.lisp/2006... --- never a good sign. Two people answered, one with a link to his rant on comp.lang.lisp, and one talking about the virtues of CLSQL.

The code snippet from CLSQL looks horrendous:

  ;; select the user with ID 1 and set his username column to joe
  (let ((user (first (select 'user :where [= [id] 1] :flatp t :refresh t))))
    (setf (username user) "joe")
    (update-records-from-instance user))

Compare this to

  User.find(1).update_attribute(:username, "joe")

16 tokens vs 45. I don't know CLOS, but

  (update-attribute (find *User* 1) 'username "joe")

is a great start.