I think you need to take a step back, because you are analysing your problems at the wrong abstraction level. It sounds like you had an engineering problem, not

I think you need to take a step back, because you are analysing your problems at the wrong abstraction level. It sounds like you had an engineering problem, not a programming language one. Changing the programming language won't prevent newbie programmers from wreaking havoc in your code base, nor improve the software design skills of your colleagues. On the other hand, I do agree that programming languages have a "culture" which defines the idioms that are accepted, patterns, attitudes towards various practices. My feeling is that hyper-oop programmers have long moved on to Java and .NET. C has a culture of keeping things simple, because of its long history and limited abstraction possibilities. It's also the favorite refuge of people that hate OOP, so no surprise you won't see over-engineered OOP hierarchies.