First, let's pick this apart:
so we prefer people not to use divide ..., malloc ..., or other object oriented practice that carry large penalty.
Division and malloc
are not unique to object oriented programming, they are present in procedural languages too (and presumably functional, and whatever other paradigms you might think of).
Division and malloc
can be a problem on an embedded system if the system has sufficiently limited resources, that much is true, but they will be a problem no matter what programming paradigm you use.
Onto the main issue "Is object orientation bad for embedded systems?".
Firstly, 'object orientation' is quite a broad spectrum. Some people have conflicting ideas about what it actually means. There's a minimalist definition where an object is essentially just a bundle of functions (or 'methods') and data, and there's a more 'purist' definition that also includes features like inheritance and polymorphism.
If you take the minimalist definition of OOP then no - OOP is not bad for embedded systems. It does depend on the language, but it's entirely possible for using objects to be just as cheap as not using objects (and possibly cheaper in some situations). In C++, an object (without virtual
methods, which I'll get to in a moment) takes up no more memory than its individual fields would if they weren't part of an object. In C++, (the size of) an object is equal to the sum of (the size of) its parts.
However, if you take the 'puritan' view of OOP and insist on including inheritance and polymorphism then the answer is 'yes, it is bad'. Inheritance is perhaps less of a concern (depending on the language), but polymorphism via virtual
methods is a definite memory chewer. virtual
functions are usually implemented by maintaining a 'vtable' (a virtual method table) that stores pointers to the correct functions, and each object must store a pointer to its vtable to enable dynamic dispatch (the process of calling virtual functions) to work properly. There are circumstances in which inheritance can use more memory than solutions that don't require inheritance - typically when comparing inheritance to composition, composition sometimes uses less memory.
One last point, particularly for the case of C++ (since that's usually what people mean when they talk about using OOP on embedded systems). People often say that "C++ does strange things behind your back" - it does do some things without those things being immediately obvious when looking at the code, such as producing the vtables I mentioned earlier, however it doesn't do these things "behind your back" in an attempt to thwart you, it does these things because they are simply needed to implement the features being used. Overall there are very few detrimental things that happen 'behind the scenes', and the things it does aren't exactly arcane or mysterious, they're generally quite well known and they're things the programmer ought to be aware of when programming for an embedded system. If you don't know about them then you don't know your tools properly and you should research them some more.
Having said all that, remember that people are free to be selective with which language features they do and don't use. It makes absolute sense to avoid the more expensive features like virtual functions, but it doesn't make sense to forgo an entire language (like C++) simply because it has a few expensive entirely optional features (like virtual functions) - that's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.