Today, Slashdot linked to a slightly negative Forrester report on aspect-oriented programming (AOP). It was compared with the GOTO statement and other features that were deemed ugly. I haven't formed a firm opinion yet on AOP, but I do know that there are lots of things that are awkwardly expressed in an OO language such as Java. If AOP can make one more productive, then I'm inclined to just salute the effort.
True visionaries take a broader view: Jim Coplien wrote an article in 2001 on
symmetry and broken symmetry in programming languages. And in 2004, Victoria Livschitz gave her opinion on what she thought the next move in programming would be. Highly enlightening, especially in the recent AOP "debates"...