OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice

ike many ideas that sound good in theory but are clumsy in practice, object-oriented programming (OOP) offers benefits only in a specialized context—namely, group programming. And even in that circumstance the benefits are dubious, though the proponents of OOP would have you believe otherwise. Some shops claim OOP success, but many I've spoken with are still "working on it." Still trying to get OOP right after ten years? Something strange is going on here.

Certainly for the great majority of programmers—amateurs working alone to create programs such as a quick sales tax utility for a small business or a geography quiz for Junior—the machinery of OOP is almost always far more trouble than it's worth. OOP just introduces an unnecessary layer of complexity to procedure-oriented design. That's why very few programming books I've read use OOP techniques (classes, etc.) in their code examples. The examples are written as functions, not as methods within objects. Programming books are trying to teach programming—not the primarily clerical and taxonomic essence of OOP. Those few books that do superimpose the OOP mechanisms on their code are, not surprisingly, teaching about the mysteries of OOP itself.