Why are many languages case sensitive?

Question

Why are many languages case sensitive?

Is it simply a matter of inheritance? C++ is case-sensitive because C is, Java is case-sensitive because C++ is, etc.? Or is t

Answer 1

Lots of people here have said that it would be bad for several forms of capitalization to refer to the same thing, e.g.:

person
perSoN
PERSON

What would be really bad is if these all referred to different objects in code. If you've got variables person, perSoN and PERSON all referring to different things, you've got a problem.