The AITO Test of Time Winners for 2021

An Overview of AspectJ. Gregor Kiczales, Erik Hilsdale, Jim Hugunin, Mik Kersten, Jeffrey Palm, William G. Griswold. ECOOP 2001.

Award committee: Wolgang De Meuter (chair, AITO exec member), Jonathan Aldrich (PC member of ECOOP 2021), Görel Hedin (PC member of ECOOP 2001)

Motivations: This paper introduces a dynamic join point model with pointcuts that is now a part of the vocabulary that is covered by popular SE textbooks such as the one by Ian Sommerville. The paper describes a practical implementation of AOP by extending Java, the most popular programming language at the time. This made it a seminal paper that has been refered to more than 4000 times. The paper turned AOP into a mature research topic which also influenced other topics such as context-oriented programming, feature-oriented programming and software product lines.