Friday, June 6, 2003

Understanding AOP This is a great introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming, the next big thing since OOP. Here are some choice quotes: Part of the reason that AOP promotes separation of concerns is that many concerns apply to many classes simultaneously, crosscutting class hierarchies. For example, consider a GUI application in which the status bar must be continuously updated to reflect the current state of the system. Usually, this requires status update code to be inserted throughout the application. In AOP terms, the status update is an aspect of the program as a whole, and should be separated from the main code as a result. [snip] If you remember nothing else about AOP, remember that it is fundamentally about separation of concern. [snip] For a more detailed discussion of the lingo that surrounds AOP, I suggest reading the AspectJ introduction (located on the AspectJ site); even if you don't plan to use AspectJ. It goes over all of the terms and provides some useful examples. Hopefully that text plus this backgrounder will help make AOP a little easier to grok. [In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up] 5:25:01 PM