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In this work the ideas of object-oriented programming are analyzed from different points of view. Our objective is to evaluate the strength of these ideas in expressing abstractions and producing reusable software. At first, we try to detect at what stages a programming paradigm impacts the development of software. Then we study three possible ways for conceptualizing object-oriented programming and relate them to the original works that introduced object-oriented ideas. The third part of this dissertation focuses on the formal aspects of these concepts, using type theory. In chapter four we discuss the implementation of objects, classes and inheritance in some object-oriented programming languages. We finish our investigation discussing our experience in designing a library of routines for manipulating graphs. This work provided us with the oportunity of dealing with generic collections, parameterized types and multiple representations for abstract data types. We conclude that object-oriented programming offers appropriate principles for producing software but is far from being a solution for all system development problems