OO is NOT the silver bullet

A recurring theme within the software industry since its inception has been the problem of poor quality software. Over the last few years object-orientated (OO) approaches have been promoted as a major panacea to these ills and it is claimed that already they are widely adopted. This may be true in education where a recent survey of 27 UK universities reported that all were teaching OO technology to some degree. However, the same is not necessarily true of industry and one must question whether or not they are really addressing fundamental problems or are simply yet another technological fad.