You misunderstand. I'm merely using STL/Boost as one example of advanced non-OO programming. Many other such paths to sophisticated programming exist that don't

You misunderstand. I'm merely using STL/Boost as one example of advanced non-OO programming. Many other such paths to sophisticated programming exist that don't go through OO, including the ones you name. I use STL/Boost in this case not because I think they're wonderful but because they're realistically what I'd have to use, as our codebase is mostly C/C++.