A little off-topic, but when thinking about the reasoning behind OOP, in particular how it shows up in C++ and the C++-influences in other languages, I think it

A little off-topic, but when thinking about the reasoning behind OOP, in particular how it shows up in C++ and the C++-influences in other languages, I think it is worth looking at how large-scale C projects (OpenSSL, Gnome, etc.) organize their code: long prefixes in front of function names complex structs with lots of function pointers complicated macros for code generation These directly relate to some of the core features of C++ like namespaces, virtual functions, and templates. I think this perspective makes the differences between C++ style object orientation and Smalltalk style object orientation understandable.