Modularity in the New Millenium: A Panel Summary

摘要

Parnas' seminal work [2] on separation of concerns in design has led to diverse innovations in programming language design, to support modularity. However, there has been a growing sentiment in many quarters that there are some concerns that stubbornly resist tidy confinement, when using established modularization mechanisms in programming languages. A diverse set of new approaches have emerged in response: aspects [1], monads [5], mixin layers [3], and multi-dimensional separation of concerns [4]. These approaches arose more or less independently of each other, and have (to varying degrees) developed technical maturity, real-world credibility and strong user bases. We are also now beginning to see strong scholarly comparisions of the intellectual foundations and practical utility of these different aproaches. This panel aims to support this trend.