I think our main error was in thinking that objects could be pervasive, in the same way that today one encounters "test-driven" culture. They work reasonably w

I think our main error was in thinking that objects could be pervasive, in the same way that today one encounters "test-driven" culture. They work reasonably well at a lower level of granularity - make a fairly complex data model using components under the hood, and then publish the resulting api as a more streamlined mutable object. But the diminishing returns are fast once you start needing each piece of data to be fungible and adapt to new requirements, and then wrap it up in an object. The relational database has been standardized for some time in large part because it guides you towards coherent data automatically - systems that resist that model are more likely to experience a catastrophic failure, and "ORM" systems are likewise brittle.