Gregor Kiczales (of AspectJ fame) comments in the AspectJ mailing list about Attribute based programming: 

This question comes up fairly often -- people, when they first see AOP, ask "why not tag all the places that an aspect applies explicitly". The problem with doing this is that it violates the main goal of AOP, which is to implement these concerns in a modular way.

To see why this is true, consider what happens if, for a given concern, i.e. Logging, you decide you have the wrong name after a few months. If you have tags all over your code you have to go find them all, and then change them -- the tagging is a non-modular implementation of "describing the affected methods". If you use AspectJ style pointcuts instead, you just go to one place -- this is a modular implementation of "describing the affected methods".

Convenience again in conflict with the concerns of modularity.