[aosd-discuss] "AOP considered harmful"

[Srinivas Nedunuri]

Eric Tanter wrote:

> Thank you Ron, very interesting reply.
>
> I completely agree that the best thing among all is a good design and 
> that AOP allows for cleaner designs. And that to understand any 
> complex application, you also need good tools. I also agree that the 
> "special-case obscure artefacts" are no solutions neither.
>
> But still, this mailing list is _discuss_ at aosd.net (notice the 
> emphasize on 'discuss'), and it seems to me a bit exagerated to 
> insinuate that AOP -as it is formulated today- has no problem, and 
> that we shouldn't questions ourselves.
>
> Powerful stuff like multiple inheritance has been withdrawn from some 
> major mainstream languages because its complexity and excessive power 
> was too much compared to its benefits. It may be good to think about 
> ways for this not to happen with AOP.
>
> The work of Aldrich on specifying contracts for aspects is a good 
> example in this direction. 

do you have a reference for this work?
thanks

> It's less powerful that "plain AOP" because you need to anticipate the 
> 'aspect contract', but that brings much more confidence in what 
> happens when applying aspects. Also, in their EAOP proposal, Douence, 
> Sudholt et al. only consider aspects that _add_ some behavior. They 
> exclude 'around' because "then you cannot say anything about what will 
> happen". And I imagine there are other proposals around that target a 
> more restricted AOP.
> I'm not saying these proposals are the definitive and good solution to 
> the problems they identify, just that these problems do exist, and are 
> worth discussing (and so, especially on this list ;)).
>
> -- Eric
>
>
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