Explicit Programming is standing in a middle ground between macro systems and AOP functionality. The objective is to modularize cross cutting concerns without separating them (AOP does both). The approach takes the view that modularization will take place as programmers refactor their code. The authors have built a system called ELIDE which is based on Java. ELIDE allows a developer to introduce new modifiers for classes, fields, and methods. This makes me wonder if part of ELIDE could be implemented via attributes (JSR-175). ELIDE uses a JSP/Velocity like templating syntax for specifying the modularized behavior -- the actual implementation is by source code transformation (much like macros). The use of string based templating is is scary, but the authors claim that the alternative is exposing a parse tree or other compiler data structure. A simple dependency system is used to make sure that multiple transformations are applied in a sane order.

Bruce Wallace has an article describing a way to kind of do Explicit Programming using marker interfaces. This approach doesn't provide for automatic management/generation, but it does allow for making a concern explicit via the marker interface.