Programming in a new way lengthens the economic lifetime for software, CWI researcher Arie van Deursen said during his inaugural speech as software engineering professor at the Technische Universiteit Delft on February 23, 2005.
Our society depends more and more on software. Software code should not only be designed but also needs constant adaptation to meet new requirements. However, more changes mean more complexity until the software becomes so complex that is no longer profitable to update it anymore. This is called the evolution paradox.
As a solution van Deursen pleads for software exploration: Providing insight into the structure of existing programs and thus enabling software engineers to change the program more easily. One of the methods to make the structure clearly visible is aspect oriented programming. Similar parts of code spread over the program will be automatically detected and set apart, outside the actual program.
More information can be found on SEN1's website, Arie van Deursen's homepage, the press release of the TUD or the text of the inaugural speech
