Extraneous Embedded Knowledge and Adaptive Programming An ACM SIGSOFT 2000 paper

What is EEK? We refer to knowledge of the external world within a component (e.g., a method or class) that is not conceptually required for the behavior of that component as extraneous embedded knowledge (EEK).

Example A method for checking whether each class in a class dictionary is defined exactly once (or imported). What is EEK? Knowledge about the details of a class dictionary for class dictionaries.

Analogy to human conversation Interpret messages differently depending on the implicit context. –omission –alteration traverse(Strategy s, Visitor v) is interpreted very differently depending on the ObjectGraph-object to which message is sent.

Analogy to human conversation traverse(Strategy s, Visitor v) is interpreted very differently depending on context. explain(politics) is interpreted very differently depending on context. You take the background of the audience into account.

Reference Robert Walker and Gail Murphy: Implicit Context: Easing Software Evolution and Reuse. SIGSOFT 2000, San Diego, pp , ACM Press.