Learning OOP...

[Rod Weston]

The reasons I feel a need to learn OOP languages are as follows:
  1. I feel that OOP offers the best conceptual fit for my programming
projects which are primarily business oriented.
  2. Career choices - any programmer in today's market needs to be OOP
conversant and productive, preferably with a language that will be
recognized and used 'a lot', thereby generating profitable
opportunities.
  3. I want to reuse code as much as possible.
  4. I want to reduce errors and take advantage of advanced debugging
tools.
  5. I want strong and flexible data typing - I know it sounds like an
oxymoron.  I want the typing to be especially powerful (restrictive)
but I want to be able to define the constraints of the types myself.
  6. I want something relatively easy to use and to learn.
  7. I want reduced development times and enhanced maintenance tools.
  8. I want portability and scalability.
  9. I want a lot of open source code available.
 10. I want source code that is easily read.
 11. I want good quality but free or inexpensive tools - especially a
validated compiler to properly optimize my code for the task at hand
and catch as many errors as possible at compile time.

Not all the objectives relate to OOP, but most do.  From what I've
seen so far, Ada best meets my criteria but I have not done enough
research yet to be willing to gamble my future on it.