People like and use useful abstractions, and OO offers them: encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, inheritance. (If you don't like inheritance, don't use it.

People like and use useful abstractions, and OO offers them: encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, inheritance. (If you don't like inheritance, don't use it.) People hate bloat, complicated ways of doing simple things, and AbstractFactoryAdapterFactoryAdapterFactories. These abominations got built in Java, an OO language. Toss out all the religion and all you have are a few useful programming ideas. I was around when a popular "software development tool" of the day was a template. (No, not what you are thinking. I mean, a piece of plastic with shapes cut out of it.) You could use to draw flowcharts. Then, "structured programming" came along, basically the OO of its day. Structured programming meant no GOTOs. Instead, use the things that GOTOs usually implement: while loops, if/then, if/then/else. Keep functions to no more than "a page" (i.e., entirely visible on an old 24x80 screen). Structured programming was uncontroversial. People recognized progress and adapted it. This happened when there were very, very few independent software companies, and there was a miniscule market of software developers. I can see though, how it could have gone wrong if there were companies intent on exploiting structured programming by turning it into a complicated fad requiring salesmen, consultants, trainers, and all the other profit-making paraphenalia.