It is so interesting to watch up we take input, and somewhere in the process it gets munged up in the brain.
I do this all the time. When I look at something I just typed, such as a piece of code, I don't see what I typed at all. Nope. I see what I thought, wanted, and should have typed.
I was talking to another kind soul today about AOP. I happen to be a fan, an advocate, or whatever you want to call it. Does this mean that I believe that if we all start to use AOP that software will suddenly become simple? Suddenly we will not make anymore mistakes in our design? Of course not. This is just a tool folks. A tool that can help with the complexity of cross cutting concerns.
How many cross concerns are out there? A bunch... Is everything a cross cutting concern? Not even close.
I was told that the AOP guys are touting that it is the best thing since sliced bread, that it is a saviour, and that this is going to bring on a nightmare as people abuse it. I asked the fellow to show me ONE example of a thought leader (using the term just to piss of Hani) in the AOP space saying this. Of course he couldn't. The real thought leaders rarely do!
AOP is a great tool, but just like we have learned to favour compositionin OO, we should favour OO interfaces compared to AO. What does this really mean? It means... when you start.... REALLY think about if it makes sense to use AO. Don't just run into it.... think really hard, what are the implications? Write some test first code that has a few use cases to make sure it still makes sense.
So, listen to the AOP mentors (of which I am not one by the way!), not the people who jump on the bandwagon!
Of course, my little blog entry won't stop anything.
As Mike Spille wrote:
When a novel technology just starts to come into common practice, there seems to inevitably be a cycle that has been repeated from time immemorial:
Early adopters experimenting all over the map
Said early adopters writing optimistic and enthusiastic articles about it
"The masses" start to adopt based on the early adopter's enthusiasm
Early results are good, because people always start small and they benefit from the "low hanging fruit".
Over time, usage grows, complexity in usage grows, people start to see the downsides
As more time goes by, people will write books like "Bitter AOP" and "Pragmatic AOP" and "AOP Sucks - The Case for Procedural Programming" :-)
A few people will note that the gist of these books are issues that were obvious early on to the early adopters, but were suppressed and/or ignored due to undue enthusiasm or an unconscious need to suppress negative comments
Now I would temper one thing said. Said early adopters writing optimistic and enthusiastic articles about it. We have to listen to the folk who are really using it versus any ole early adopter.
I hope the mistakes are tamed a little this time around, and we don't all start writing everything as an aspect.
Obviously it depends on your project, your thoughts on AO etc... however some have said that:
90% of code will be handled via OO. 10% of it can be more cleanly designed with aspects
NOTE: Again, just to make sure... when I talk about the AOP mentors I am thinking along the lines of these guys
Previous Topic
