>> Effectively instead of object.method() you have method(object)

> This reflects a very deep misunderstanding of the distinctive characteristics of each paradigm.

I think the parent made a hasty reading of the GP comment. The GP shows an awareness of multiple OO systems in R.

I believe the GP is attempting to explain to a Java programmer how R could be considered object-oriented even though `plot(item)` does not "look like" what you would see in an object oriented system.

Which is to say: there is an generic function dispatch based on the type of the first argument to the function. This can be _used_ to write in an OO style.

What GP is saying is that while Java is object-centric, R (and CLOS etc) is method-centric: you don't have classes with multiple methods, you have generic functions with multiple methods (each of which implements that function for particular argument types): http://adv-r.had.co.nz/OO-essentials.html#s3

This is not about functional programming at all; the distinction here is completely orthogonal to that.