Program, Enhance Thyself! - Demand-Driven Pattern-Oriented Program Enhancement

Program enhancement refers to adding new functionality to an existing program. The authors argue that repetitive program enhancement tasks can be expressed as patterns, and that the application of such enhancement patterns can be automated. This paper presents a novel approach to pattern-oriented automated enhancement of object-oriented programs. The approach augments the capabilities of an aspect compiler to capture the programmer's intent to enhance a program. In response to the programmer referencing a piece of functionality that is non-existent, the approach automatically synthesizes aspect code to supply the required functionality transparently.