Re:Java != OOP, C++ != OOP (Score 2, Insightful)

The generation of code is the small (critically important, but small) part of development. The "game" is in the head, or more precisely the mind of the developer. Teaching someone to write code effectively is not a terribly daunting prospect. However, teaching someone to think, much much more complicated. In contribution to this difficulty the education system here in the USA is not geared towards excellence, it is geared towards the average, the everyday. Just an opinion, feel free to flame away, but the so termed fuzzy subjects such as art and music teach students to see not what is there, but what isn't, and more importantly what could be. There are a great many technicians out there who generate code, but virtuosity in any endeavor is art as much as science or technology, it is seeing, feeling. I had the privalege of speaking at my daughter's school on career day and when asked what I did, my response was, I build models. I build models of business process or at the moment engineering processes. In short what we do as developers is model behavior. I have maintained for years that the only way to get good at development is not education, it's scars, scars earned in the trenches getting beaten on by cranky code, twitchy servers and managers who haven't got a clue. The same is true for OO, get into it up to your neck, get it into your pores think it breathe it read it discuss it beat it to death. Then you can become a prophet in the wilderness of software development and have managers look at you like you're something to the left of a cultist. Balkanboy is right it's not easy, but "It's the hard that makes it great. If it was easy anyone could do it." (paraphrased from "A League of Their Own"