Wow, lots of stuff to reply to ...

CRC: Ah, uhm... I'm sorry. [...]

Thanks. We've had good conversations in the past, I'm glad we can continue to do so. And I'll refrain from gratuitous editing of your quotes too.

Thanks for the Delphi answers. Other than knowing that is is a object-oriented Pascal, my knowledge of Delphi is almost nil. I'll probably have some followup questions or comments after I digest the material.

Regarding background, my major languages are C, C++, Java, Ruby, Eiffel (though C++ and Eiffel are a bit rusty). Along the way I've picked up some Perl, Forth Haskel, Modula 2 (no Modula3), Smalltalk, Python, TCL, Lisp/Scheme and (pre-object) Ada. I've probably left out something. I think I once knew FORTRAN, but I won't admit to it any more.

Regarding the word "strong"...

CRC: No, that wasn't your "only" claim -- you used the expression "strongly OO", and whether that terminology was your own invention or not, the mere act of using it does imply something more: That you agree that these languages are somehow "more strongly" OO than others. My questions about where this comes from remain unanswered.

I probably would have done better to leave off the word "strong". My argument was can be paraphrased as follows: If we have a list of languages that everyone agrees are OO languages, and none of these languages support feature X, then calling feature X a "benefit of OO" is a bit of a stretch.

The use of the phrase "strongly OO" was meant in the sense that the OO support in these languages is strong enough that no one would call them non-OO languages. "Better" was not implied. Indeed, the object models of these languages are so different that to argue that one is better would most likely exclude the others from the list.

CRC: [...] he saw it as a major benefit of using (at least some) OO languages [...]

Then a better subject line would have been "Great OO Argument Closer for a small number of OO languages".

Regarding Weird-OO (clever catch phrase) Languages ...

CRC: This constantly pisses me off from the proponents of [...] "Weird-OO" -- advocates of Smalltalk, Java, Lisp... (and perhaps Eiffel, Ruby, and Jython too) -- languages with weak typing, garbage collection, bass-ackwards syntax (and [...] "closures" and whatnot), [...]

You are again painting with a broad brush. I tried to include a variety of languages in the list. Some are dynamically typed, some are statically typed (we can argue the definitions of strong/weak typing some other time).

Weird syntax? Eiffel's syntax has strong roots in the Pascal family (via Ada). Ruby is more inline with the Pascal family than the C, Smalltalk or Lisp family.

Garbage collection technology is over 40 years old and is a component of many major production languages, both OO and non-OO. Calling it weird-OO is just, well, weird.

Closures are just one tiny step away from nested procedures in Pascal. In fact, scratch that. I think I could argue that nested procedures in Pascal are closures. They just aren't anonymous closures.

I do believe that you have run up against language evangelists, and I probably have probably played the role of one in the past (and will again in the future if I feel like it). But I think you are reading way too much in my posting in this thread. I think I've been more or less advocacy free and just reporting verifiable facts (e.g. RAII works in language X, it doesn't work in language Y, etc).

CRC: Ha! How can that even hope to be OO, when it doesn't even have strong typing?

In Chapter 2 of Object Oriented Software Construction, Bertrand Meyer lays forth the criteria of object orientation. On page 25 he names a criteria Static Typing: "A will-defined type system wshould, by enforcing a number of type declartion and compatibility rules, guarantee the run-time type safety of the systems it accepts". It sounds like you and the Eiffel language designer are on the same page.