What I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the salesmen figured it was complete bs and no one would notice if they just sold counterfeit oil.
What I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the salesmen figured it was complete bs and no one would notice if they just sold counterfeit oil.
Object Orientation was used for almost everything in Smalltalk, but when someone tried to introduce it in C-based languages, some programmers figured it was bs. Some "consultants" figured it was more programming industry bs/fashion and some marketers figured people would buy stuff if they just claimed everything was Object Oriented.
In the right context, OO can be pretty darn good, but it's not a panacea for everything. (And there is some good OO in C-heritage languages.)
That last part at least is correct. Clark Stanley (the original snake oil salesman) traveled around with a bag full of snakes, and made a big show out of rendering them into oil. But the actual product was just beef fat and some other ingredients.