Why AIDA gets it wrong

The AIDA interfaces for data analysis have shot themselves in the foot by several misunderstandings of what object orientation is about. With AIDA's promise squandered, and de facto ownership of the HEP analysis "market" defaulting to the abysmal ROOT system, high energy physics is lacking a decent tool for data presentation. In this article I'll describe what seems to have gone wrong with AIDA (at least, the technical aspects --- I can't account for sociology) and suggest an alternative approach for the next version of Rivet.