OOP is it impraticle?

Question

I was perusing the Wikipedia entry for OOP and looking at a few of the criticism links. To me the arguments aer based on things that OOP supposedly says but that I don't really consider OOP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_oriented_programming#Criticism
Perhaps they misunderstand OOP. Perhaps I'm not using OOP but rather some sort of bastardized hybrid. I do think that what I consider OO is not what I've read about or seen described in a lot of places. I've been influenced by the Interface concept such that I only consider OO concepts important at key 'gateways' or communication points in the program. Behind the scenes, (e.g. implementation classes) I have no problem violating OO principles because it's not part of the public API.
Those of you who feel you have used OO to it's fullest potential: do you think OO is an effective way to program? Do you think pure OO (as an academic might describe it) is realistic?

Answer 1

Nobody understands OO.
Relational databases had E. F. Codd, who defined the field with his articles back in the 1970's. So now there isn't any argument about whether a database system is relational or not.
Whereas OO didn't have that foundation. So dozens of people have thrown out principles that they say are part of OO. That makes it easy for people to argue about whether something is or isn't OO. As the first link in that Criticisms section says, "The lack of consistency in OO methodologies and definitions makes it nearly impossible to make any statement about OO that all OO practitioners will agree with." Of course not all OO practitioners would agree with that.
So instead of Codd, you have codswallop.
I've been writing business programs for 30 years now. And looking back on the 25 years where I knew nothing about OO, I see hardly anything where OO would have made any difference. When you're dealing with customers and inventory and taxes where all the data is in SQL databases, OO isn't particularly helpful and when you try to use it, it just gets in the way. (Our systems aren't written in COBOL but I'm indirectly supporting Duffy's sarcastic comment here.)
That's not to say OO has no place in our business. We do have places where heterogeneous things are happening and we don't need to put them in rectangular boxes, and for those things OO is extremely useful. We have business partners sending us data in various forms through various channels and various things have to be done to that data before it's put into the rectangular boxes. That's where you can make use of the levels of abstraction that OO provides, and we've had a lot of success using it there.
But pure OO? Not in our business.