Do we really need to extend syntax for advanced modularity?

Abstract

For every new language construct (or abstraction), we have been always developing new syntax. Is this a right approach? In this paper, we propose that, if we develop a new language construct for advanced modularity, we should consider the use of dynamic text for designing the construct. We mention that language constructs designed with only syntactic extensions (i.e. static text) are not satisfactory in aspect oriented programming. Then we present our two prototype systems to demonstrate language constructs designed with dynamic text. One is synchronous copy and paste and the other is a virtual-file editor named Kide. We show how they enable aspect-oriented programming in plain Java. © 2012 ACM.