What are the disadvantages of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP)?

Question

What are the possible and critical disadvantages of Aspect-Oriented Programming?

For example: cryptic debugging for newbies (readability impact)

Answer 1

I would not call it a critical disadvantage, but the biggest problem I have seen is one of developer experience and ability to adapt. Not all developers yet understand the difference between declarative and imperative programming.

We make use of the policy injection application block in EntLib 4.1 pretty extensively as well as Unity for DI and it's just not something that sinks in quickly for some people. I find my self explaining over and over again to the same people why the application is not behaving in the way they expect. It generally starts off them explaining something and me saying "see that declaration above the method." :) Some people get it right away, love it and become extremely productive -- others struggle.

Learning curve is not unique to AOP, but it seems to have a higher learning curve that other things that your average developer encounters.