Object-oriented programming has a growing number of converts. Many people believe that object orientation will put a dent in the software crisis. There is a glimmer of hope that object oriented software development will become more like engineering. However, before making this quantum leap, object-oriented methods still have to prove themselves with respect to more established software development paradigms. True, for small tasks the war is over. Object oriented programs are more compact than classic structured programs. It is easier to whip them together using powerful class libraries. Inheritance allows “differential programming”, the modification in a descendant class of what is wrong with a parent class, while inheriting all of its good stuff. User interfaces, which are often sizable fractions of small systems, can be put together easily from object-oriented libraries.