Some questions about Ada.

[clgonsal@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Carl Laurence Gonsalves)]

I've got a couple of questions about Ada. I have to confess that I've never
written a single line of Ada code. I've got experience in C, C++, Modula-3,
Java, and Scheme, and several other languages. I've recently become
interested in finding out about Ada, partly because I've noticed that both
Java and Modula-3 seem to have been influenced by Ada's design, and I think
both languages are very good.

One thing I'm wondering about is packages. I've heard that packages are
"better" than than the way C++ uses classes. I'm curious as to why this is.
Modula-3 has modules (which are similar, AFAIK, to Ada's packages) and
"object types" (classes) as two distinct entities. I'v always thought that
C++'s way of allowing just about anything to be nested in a class much
cleaner and simpler. (and for the record, I was programming in Modula-3
before I was programming in C++) So are packages better? Why?

Second, I've been wondering why Ada is case-insensitive. I'm aware that Ada
was very carefully designed, so I'm thinking there must be some reason it
was made case-insensitive rather than case-sensitive, but I can't imagine
what that reason could be.

Any explanations would be appreciated.

(BTW, if either of these questions is a FAQ, please forgive me. I haven't
gotten around to getting a copy of the comp.lang.ada FAQ yet)

-- 
        Carl Laurence Gonsalves - clgonsal@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
                   Computer Science, University of Waterloo
               http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~clgonsal/
                   http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~clgonsal/