On the Necessity of Empirical Studies in the Assessment of Modularization Mechanisms for Crosscutting Concerns

Collaborations are a frequently occurring class of cross-cutting concerns. Prior work has argued that collaborations are better implemented using collaboration languages (CLs) rather than AspectJ-like Languages (ALs). The main argument is that aspects flatten the object-oriented structure of a collaboration, and introduce more complexity rather than benefits - in other words, CLs and ALs differ with regard to program comprehension. To explore the effects of CL and AL modularization mechanisms on program comprehension, we propose to conduct a series of experiments. We present ideas on how to arrange such experiments that should serve as a starting point and foster a discussion with other researchers.