I had the same experience trying to learn C++ as a kid, the book i got had all sorts of OO examples and all i could get is “why would I want to do this?” and my progress learning to program was put back by years.
I almost actually considered leaving programming in the mid 2000s but then I started seeing the tide slowly turn away from OOP, or at least I found voices that agreed that OOP is not the only answer and I felt a sense of relief. Then as latency became a more and more important thing in algo trading, it eventually fell out of favor almost entirely.
But yeah, OOP has a place but it really went overboard for awhile and there was jiggawatts of brainpower spent on trying to make it work when straight C or other approaches would have worked much better- and with much more grokable code!
So I've been learning Smalltalk/Pharo and reading Smalltalk, Objects, and Design [1] because people say that's what OOP was really supposed to be. It's been interesting and enlightening in some ways, but I still feel like I'd rather do most things without OOP. Do you think it's still helpful or worth it to dig into all this for someone now?
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-Objects-Design-Chamond-Liu/...
I would skim it though, just to have a sense of what's in there.