Are packages and classes important?

[Jigganis]

I'm reading this Essential ActionScript 3 book from O'Reilly, and the author seems to put a lot of emphasis into these things, at least in the first chapter. So are they really worth something? Do you professional programmers here really use them a lot?

[DarkMana]

Packages and classes allow you write code in a modular, organized, and reusable fashion.

[WolfAkela]

You'll end up using them a lot. Beginning to code in Flash with OOP design in mind would greatly simplify a lot of problems.

Well of course you always have the nooby option of not using them then end up typing more than 10 times more lines code mainly due to redundancy, not to mention the horrible organization you'd have to manage and the piss poor extensibility, where you could possibly end up rewriting the whole thing if you want to modify a part.

[GustTheASGuy]

Surely you'll see the advantages of classes further in the book, packages are pretty much just folders for classes (because there tend to be a lot of them).