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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: ADA Objects Help!
Date: 18 Jan 1995 12:47:41 -0500
Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
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Date: 1995-01-18T12:47:41-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"why not packages and package types"

why not indeed? it is always interesting to see people joining the party
late and treading previously trodden realms :-)

Yes, this is an attractive idea, one that some important Ada folks have
championed, and which has been examined extensively.

Basically the conclusion is that following this line of thought leads
(a) to excessive complexity, it is very tricky to work out all the
 ramifications 

(b) to a confusion of concepts, packages are not happy extended in this
 direction, and it causes a confusion (unification???) of types and packages.
 The final decision of the Ada design is that this would have confused rather
 than unified.

(c) the building of the OOP notions on top of derived types is much more
 powerful and general, and avoids some of the limitations that come from
 a narrow, distinguished object approach.

Tuck may want to add to this, clearly a full answer will saturate the internet
bandwidth for some time!