Aspectj Cookbook

1.1. A Brief History of Aspect Orientation

Aspect orientation is not a completely new approach to writing software. In much the same way as virtual machine systems were not an entirely new concept when Java became recognized and adopted by the software community, there have been tools and development environments for some time that support some of the capabilities that are now being placed under the banner of aspect orientation. Like Java, aspect orientation is becoming a commonly adopted and de facto approach to practicing older ideas that can be traced to almost the beginning of software development.

Development environments and tools that weave code, pragma instructions, and even debuggers all contain some of the behavior that underlies the aspect-oriented approach. But the significant difference is in the philosophy behind the approach and how that philosophy drives the technology and tools. Aspect orientation is not about any one of these technologies on its own, though it is a new and more modular implementation of the advantages that these technologies have brought to their own domains in the past.

All that said, the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of aspect orientation are not a subject for this type of book. If you are interested in finding out more about this side of the technology, it's best to search Google for "Aspect-Oriented Software Development." This book focuses on practical approaches to understanding the technology; it is about getting the job done by harnessing the impressive power of aspect-oriented software development.