'Most common programming paradigm' it might be, but people's exposure to it will vary by domain.

Would you say that someone who has been coding embedded systems for 30 years in assembly and minimalist C is a bad programmer just because they've never done OO? Despite the fact that for what they're doing it might be a bad choice, and they've specialised into an area that is vastly different from what you might expect as the norm?

> Would you say that someone who has been coding embedded systems for 30 years in assembly and minimalist C is a bad programmer just because they've never done OO?

If all that's been doing for 30 years, then probably, yeah. They might be good at their job, but an overall good programmer? Maybe they were great 30 years ago, but if they haven't raised their head to look around at the evolution in the industry and kept up with newer trends and developments, the level of skill atrophy would be quite large.

Attitudes like this are why I did CompE instead of CS. Yes you do learn OO in early CS classes, however you can use procedural programming in the real world to get excellent results. It is "bad code", but a lot of coders are interested in results more than "the current landscape of programming".

You totally misread me. I'm not saying you should use OO to be a good programmer. I'm saying you should know it.