Hiding class pointers -- was it a good idea?

[Walter Bright]

James Dennett wrote:
> For one, rather restricted, notion of OOP.  There are many,
> many views of what constitutes OOP in the PL community.

The definition I use is a common one, OOP design consists of three 
characteristics:

1) inheritance
2) polymorphism
3) encapsulation

>> In C++, an OOP class can be used/misused by the user as a value type or
>> a reference type, all out of the purview of the class designer. The
>> class designer must control this, not the class user.
> 
> It's normal in C++ to make "entity" classes (those that
> you're calling reference types) noncopyable.  It's also
> normal to make base classes abstract.  Thus idioms easily
> prevent the basic misuses.

C++ is loaded with idioms and conventions to try and head off major 
problems. I'd rather snip off such problems at the source - for one 
reason, it will dramatically reduce the learning curve of the language. 
For another, the more guarantees the language can offer, the lesser a 
burden it is on the code auditor, and the more likely the code is to be 
correct.