Do I know any java programmers who use Aspect Orientated Programming (specifically AspectJ) and actually *likes* it? I understand it is another level of indirection, but I am wondering whether it is another level too far.
It;s like C++ templates in the mid-nineties. I don't mind using asp[ects written by other teams who do that for a living, but I'd run away from a team that wanted to write their own.
I'm using it in some autogenerated code (SpringRoo). The end result is a bit cleaner than not using AspectJ but it is a pain trying to understand what code is available to me.
I did my final project on it at uni in 2000, building webservers and adding features using AspectJ, Hyper/J (and IBM project that used similar but very different ideas) and normal OO programming.
I use the ideas of it a lot in my programming today (although I don't touch Java any more), but it was starting to get too fiddly imo back then, even before they made it more complicated. If you have good tool support then it seems to work, but these days without the tools it seems to be impossible to keep any system of any level of scale in your head.
As for working out what code's available to you, if my memory serves then you shouldn't consider aspect code available unless you are writing more code in that aspect - seperating concerns into separate modules is what it's all about.
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I use the ideas of it a lot in my programming today (although I don't touch Java any more), but it was starting to get too fiddly imo back then, even before they made it more complicated. If you have good tool support then it seems to work, but these days without the tools it seems to be impossible to keep any system of any level of scale in your head.
As for working out what code's available to you, if my memory serves then you shouldn't consider aspect code available unless you are writing more code in that aspect - seperating concerns into separate modules is what it's all about.
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