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As the question states.

What is an 'advice'? More importantly, what does it even mean (semantics)? What's the etymology of 'advice' in the Spring context?

MrStack
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  • http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/aop.html –  Aug 03 '12 at 18:35
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    I know all that. I still don't know the etymology of the word 'advice' in the Spring context. Sure, it's an action taken by an aspect at a particular join point. Sure, it intercepts around certain points in the code. That explains the how, it doesn't explain the what. I need to know why the Spring developers chose the word 'advice' for this, because it's not making any sense to me. If I can't relate to it, if I can't make relationships between those concepts in my mind, I can't understand it. So I still don't know what it etymologically means. – MrStack Aug 03 '12 at 18:40

1 Answers1

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It's an established standard term of aspect-oriented programming. From Wikipedia:

In aspect and functional programming, advice describes a class of functions which modify other functions when the latter are run; it is a certain function, method or procedure that is to be applied at a given join point of a program.

[...]

The term advice goes back to the term advising as introduced by Warren Teitelman in his PhD thesis in 1966.

Michael Borgwardt
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    Still explains too much of 'how' and 'what'. I'm looking for the 'why' in this. I have searched dictionary.com and I have found this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/advice?s=t : "2) a communication, especially from a distance, containing information 3) an official notification". Some synonyms included: 'to admonish' which in turn means: "to urge to a duty; remind". In that context I could see 'to advise' as reminding another piece of code of something "Hey, you threw an Exception; you got logged". Distant communication: disconnected entity providing information (log()). – MrStack Aug 03 '12 at 20:12
  • Also found this: "http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/counsel?s=ts" 'to advise' means 'to give counsel'. The word 'counsel' itself has one of these meanings: "advice; opinion or instruction given in directing the judgment or conduct of another.". I suppose that makes sense in a way. A method (instruction) that directs the conduct (way of acting) of another method. – MrStack Aug 03 '12 at 20:33