[phamilton]

In situations like those, I feel like OOP is some of the most buzzword laden areas of CS.

Things like "Cohesion", "Layering", "Polymorphism", "Abstraction", etc.

They are all great concepts with a lot of important principles, but I drives me nuts how often I've heard them used excessively.

[prodigal_erik]

I would put http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liskov_substitution_principle at the top of the list of things to understand. Language features like polymorphism and encapsulation aren't exclusively OO but they're provided because they help your designs follow LSP.