Symptoms and alternatives to overused OOP

Question

Lately I am losing my trust in OOP. I have already seen many complaints about common OOP misuses or just simple overuse. I do not mean the common confusion between is-a and has-a relationship. I mean stuff like the problems of ORM when dealing with relational databases, the excessive use of inheritance from C# and also several years of looking at code with the same false encapsulation belief that Scott Meyers mentions in the item 23 of Effective C++

I am interested in learning more about this and non OOP software patterns that can solve certain problems better than their OOP counterparts. I am convinced that out there there are many people giving good advice on how to use this as an advantage with non pure OOP languages such as C++.

Does anyone knows any good reference (author, book, article) to get started?

Please, notice that I am looking for two related but different things:

• Common misuses of OOP concepts (like item 23)
• Patterns where OOP is not the best solution (with alternatives)

Answer 1

Well I can recommend you a book Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#. Examples are in C# of course, but the idea of the book is universal. Not only it covers Agile but also focuses on bad practices and shows in examples how to convert bad code to a good code. It also contains descriptions of many design pattern and shows how to implement them in semi-real example of Payroll application.

Answer 2

This has to be done but if you truly want to get away from OOP or at least take a look at concepts which are not OOP but are used with great effectiveness: Learn you a Haskell. Try a new programming paradigm and then start seeing where you can apply much of the concepts back to OOP languages. This addresses your second bullet, not in a direct way but trust me, it'll help more than you can think.