Valid observation, however, the entire point of code reuse is so that not everyone must understand every single line of code in a large project. Being able to plug a module into a project your responsible for without being overly concerned about its internal behavior, is a good thing, not a bad thing. Although I detest the comparison of software engineering to electronics engineering - one could ask if the electronics engineer is worse off for not needing to redesign every circuit in every device he designs rather than shoping around for the right IC board. He must still know how and when to use it, its operating parameters etc. No less the Software engineer judiciously integrating pre-designed software components into his work. That SHOULD be the goal the Software engineering world strives for and OOP is one technigue for achieving it

OOP is not a cure-all. Even though I am a strong advocate of the method, it is not an answer to every class of programming problem. Given enough time, the problem at hand should be evaluated to determine if the added complexity of an OO architecture is necessary. In addition, there is no problem that occurs with procedural code that can not also occur with OOP, especially with C++, since C++ is NOT a true object oriented language. OOP as a cure for spegetti code? Give me a break, some of the worst speggetti I have ever had to navigate was, on the surface, pecfectly formed OO code. The greatest argument in favor of OOP is extensibility and maintenance of a code set, via polymorphism, as well as, if properly done, code reuse. Existing code does not need to be modified to manage a given set of data, the functionality acting upon that data can be added via inheritence. Behavior of the application can be modified more safely and quickly with an OOP design. Good OOP also represents a more robust way to manage large, complex data sets. If all your data is global to a huge number of procedural functions, the management of that data is far more problamatic than if the data is carefully encapsulated in logically designed classes. With procedural code you WILL reach the upper limit of complexity far sooner than you will with good OO code. In 12 years of doing OO, however, I must say that I have never actually seen a true OO design (in C++). Every app I have ever taken a close look at violated the paradigm in any number of significant ways