You might guess from my example how little respect I have for the "don't overload operators" argument. All I can say is, all the OO languages I've spent any ti

You might guess from my example how little respect I have for the "don't overload operators" argument. All I can say is, all the OO languages I've spent any time programming do indeed let you do that, and I'm sorry for you if your experience is otherwise. So clearly I agree that adding primitives is an extremely important ability. But it's already nearly if not completely there in all the OO languages I use, using classes. I don't think primitives are enough, though. The interface / implementations of interfaces combination is also essential to my programming. Being able to say "Curve" and have it mean Straight or NURBS curve or Circle or Offset curve or Composite curve or... is another huge simplifying device. In fact, I've just looked at my code, and I have 15 distinct curve types, at least 5 of which I'd have missed if you asked me to list them, despite having written all of them over the years. That is exactly the power of simplifying abstraction. Let me point out that given a sufficiently capable OO language, this doesn't need inheritance to implement. This is just the implementation of a role or interface. But it does need classes.