This document discusses the principle of separation of concerns in software engineering. It provides an overview of separation of concerns and how it relates to breaking programs into distinct and separate areas of responsibility. The document then provides several examples of how to apply separation of concerns through different techniques like horizontal separation by layer (presentation, business, data), vertical separation by module, aspect-oriented programming for cross-cutting concerns, and dependency inversion. The benefits highlighted include increased reusability, maintainability, code quality, and understandability of the application.