This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2002, held in Malaga, Spain, in June 2002.The 24 revised full papers presented together with one full invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. The book offers topical sections on aspect-oriented software development, Java virtual machines, distributed systems, patterns and architectures, languages, optimization, theory and formal techniques, and miscellaneous.

Invited Talk 1.- Semantic Models for Distributed Object Reflection.- Aspect Oriented Software Development.- AOP: Does It Make Sense? The Case of Concurrency and Failures.- Difference-Based Modules: A Class-Independent Module Mechanism.- Dynamically Composable Collaborations with Delegation Layers.- Java Virtual Machines.- Space- and Time-Efficient Implementation of the Java Object Model.- Atomic Instructions in Java.- Code Sharing among Virtual Machines.- Miscellaneous.- J-Orchestra: Automatic Java Application Partitioning.- Supporting Unanticipated Dynamic Adaptation of Application Behaviour.- A Simple and Practical Approach to Unit Testing: The JML and JUnit Way.- Invited Talk 2.- Objectively: Components versus Web Services.- Distributed Systems.- Modular Internet Programming with Cells.- Lana: An Approach to Programming Autonomous Systems.- Engineering Event-Based Systems with Scopes.- Patterns and Architecture.- Architectural Reasoning in ArchJava.- Patterns as Signs.- Pattern-Based Design and Implementation of an XML and RDF Parser and Interpreter: A Case Study.- Languages.- Modern Concurrency Abstractions for C#.- On Variance-Based Subtyping for Parametric Types.- Type-Safe Prototype-Based Component Evolution.- Optimization.- Thin Guards: A Simple and Effective Technique for Reducing the Penalty of Dynamic Class Loading.- Type-Safe Method Inlining.- Polychotomic Encoding: A Better Quasi-Optimal Bit-Vector Encoding of Tree Hierarchies.- Theory and Formal Techniques.- Semantics-Based Composition of Class Hierarchies.- Behavioral Compatibility of Self-Typed Theories.- A Formal Framework for Java Separate Compilation.