This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: What did they say? Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

I think IBM is smoking way, way too much of the bad code flavored weed. Have a look at what Peri Tarr of IBM research says while discussing Aspect Oriented Development:

The idea is to manage "concerns" such as security policies, password schemes or internationalization rules, separately from the code to which they apply. In object-oriented software, it's difficult to add features that weren't initially planned for, because each update to the application impacts so many parts of the code, said IBM's Peri Tarr, a research staff member who works with Chung. At the same time, it's virtually impossible to anticipate every change you will want to make going forward. "AOSD lets you go back and say, 'I know now what I didn't know then. How can I modularize this software so I can add new features?'"

Ummm - if you do a decent OO design, this isn't that big a problem. OO is all about separating concerns, properly done. Maybe AOD helps there; I haven't looked that deeply into it. But you know what? If your application can't be easily modified to add new features, I seriously doubt that the magic bullet called AOD is going to help - you have other problems.