[nlawalker]

The distinction between "a set of methods with privileged access to encapsulated internal state of a class" and "a set of functions whose first param is a particular type of struct, and operate on members of that struct that everyone can access" is pretty critical though.

[mcphage]

Definitely, and encapsulation is one of the good things you get out of well designed OO. But I don't think it's that relevant in regards to objects as data+behavior, and while it leads to much better designs, I don't think it's required—hence all of the C libraries written in a very OO style. So: yes, but not really relevant to the point being discussed.