I think that was Rich Hickey's "Simple Made Easy" talk: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

I think that was Rich Hickey's "Simple Made Easy" talk: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy I think one of his most important points is that objects are good for representing, well, actual objects. As in, you have a mouse, or screen or some little robot that you are controlling through code. And that's all they are good for. Need a way to define a bunch of static methods and avoid name collisions? - you want a namespace. Need a place to store a bunch of data about something? - you want a associative array. Need a way to call the same function on different types? - you want an interface. I'm not sure about this, but I suspect part of the problem stems from the fact that object-oriented languages (usually Java these days) are the first language that students are exposed to. Once you start thinking in OO abstractions, it takes some effort to break out of the mindset.