[PRL] AOP questions

John Clements clements at brinckerhoff.org
Tue Mar 29 19:23:47 EST 2005


I have several questions, but I'm stating them as assertions. Anyone 
who can clarify my thinking or correct me, please please do so.

1) Model of computation:
	AFAICT, AOP insists on modeling evaluation as a series of execution 
states.  AOP then defines the application of advice+pcds to a program 
as a modification of this series of execution states.  That is, AOP is 
modeled as an execution monitor that watches a series of execution 
states, and interrupts execution when a piece of advice applies to the 
current execution state.  This seems sad, to me, because abstraction as 
functional programmers understand it is all about modeling procedures 
as relations from inputs to outputs, not as sequences of execution 
states.  This model seems like a giant step backward from true 
abstraction back toward FORTRAN-style subroutines.  Am I just crazy?


2) "Join Points":
	It appears to me that join points are not truly points, but are rather 
contiguous subsequences.  I say this because of the existence of things 
like "around" and "after" pcds, which don't make sense for a definition 
of join points as single points in a program's execution.  Is this 
fair?


Thanks in advance,

john clements




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