More good code has been written in languages denounced as "bad'' than in languages proclaimed "wonderful'' - much more.

Certainly not every good program is object-oriented, and not every object-oriented program is good.

Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.

There is no one "root of all evil" in software development. Design is hard in many ways. People tend to underestimate the intellectual and practical difficulties involved in building a significant system involving software. It is not and will not be reduced to a simple mechanical "assembly line" process. Creativity, engineering principles, and evolutionary change are needed to create a satisfactory large system.

Too many managers and executives try to reduce programming to a low-level assembly-line activity. That's inefficient, wasteful, costly in the long run, and inhumane to programmers.

Any verbose and tedious solution is error-prone because programmers get bored.

Tom [Cargil]s suggestion with a further idea: Propsers of new [C++] features should be required to donate a kidney. That would - Jim [Waldo] pointed out - make people think hard before proposing, and even people without any sense would propose at most two extensions.