Newbie wanna Ada

[Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com>]

Hi,

I'm not new to programming and I got some experience in a couple of 
mainstream technologies.
Once upon a time I've read on a comp.lang.c++.moderated an interesting 
post. The whole thread was about 'safeness' of C++ and Java (such 
microwars arise quite often there) and few guys had enough courage to 
plug few words about Ada.

So, I want to try my hands at it.

I've downloaded some tutorials, happily installed GNAT on my Linux and 
warmed up my fingers... but before I start I got few newbie questions:

1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
binding somewhere:
     a. How does it work?
     b. Is it efficient?
     c. Does it require Tcl runtime installed to run programs?
     d. What about Qt, for example?
3. What is the level of portability of the source code? C++ suffers from 
the fact that many vendors dare to dump crap on the market with the C++ 
logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different 'dialects' 
of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write something 
for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler will eat it?
4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C 
libs from Ada)? Is this made during the linking or in the spirit of 
Native Interfaces (like in Java)? For extremists - is it possible to 
call back some Ada procedure from the C function (possibly running in 
another thread)?
5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?

Thanks for your time,

-- 
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.maciejsobczak.com