[jackmott]

Computer science gets a lot of papers with arguments for a certain way of doing things.

Very few with controlled experiments to find out if a way of doing things is better than another.

Every time I mention this, people say that it is hard to do such experiments. Yes, it is hard to actually know things. while it is very easy to make plausible arguments, for almost anything.

[tonyplee]

Just challenge the promoter to rewrite a c++ base program in their new favorite method, paradigm.

For example, the author of this paper can try to rewrite the google chrome browser - a huge C++ project in the "non-Harmful" way.

[nine_k]

Rewriting is not very likely.

A new development could use a new paradigm. Same applies to goto vs structured programming, plain procedures vs classes and OOP-style method dispatch, etc.

[jimbokun]

This applies to you, too. What controlled experiments have you performed to test productivity differences of different methods of programming?

[khedoros1]

Jackmott didn't make a claim. The linked PDF did. Why should someone have to support a claim that they didn't make?

[dasfasf]

Jackmott is the one who introduced the standard of "controlled experiments". Why doesn't he propose an experiment design which will shed light on the question of whether classes are harmful or not?