For cases where you need to change the behaviour of the function, you get more maintainability and better results by doing it in a way that's visible in the code. For profiling, you get more maintainability and better results by using something less powerful than full AOP (e.g. stack sampling or tracing). There is certainly no case on the JVM where AOP leaves you better off than not having AOP, and I'd be surprised if there were such a case anywhere else.