What are the disadvantages of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP)?

Question

What are the possible and critical disadvantages of Aspect-Oriented Programming?

For example: cryptic debugging for newbies (readability impact)

Answer 1

I think the biggest disadvantage is using AOP well. People use it in places where it doesn't make sense, for example, and will not use it where it does.

For example, a factory pattern is obviously something that AOP can do better, as DI can also do it well, but the observer pattern is simpler when using AOP, as is the strategy pattern.

It will be harder to unit test, esp if you do the weaving at runtime.

If weaving at runtime then you also take a performance hit.

Having a good way to model what is going on when mixing AOP with classes is a problem, as UML I don't think is a good model at that point.

Unless you are using Eclipse then tools do have problems, but, with Eclipse and AJDT AOP is much easier.

We still use junit and nunit for example, and so have to modify our code to allow unit tests to run, when using priviledged mode AOP could do better unit tests by testing private methods also, and we don't have to change our programs just to make them work with unit-testing. This is another example of not really understanding how AOP can be helpful, we are still chained in many ways to the past with unit-test frameworks and current design pattern implementations and don't see how AOP could help us do better coding.