What about Ada?

[H Marx <MARXH@ALPHA.UNISA.AC.ZA>]

Hi there,
I signed onto this list to find out what Ada is about. But so far saw
only Psacal vs. C vs. Assembler...?
I use Borland Pascal 7.0 and assembler a lot. But it has limitations.
-What would be the reasons for me to use Ada?
-How portable is it?
-Are there "Integerated Developers enviroments" available?
-Does it use DOS Seg:Ofs memory scheme's, PMode, 32-bit flat?
-Can you use it in Windows? For windows?
-How good is it's database support?
-Does it allow function and operator overloading?
-How optimised/fast is the code it produces?
Someone remarked on the list that Ada does not allow Macro's, but does
give you the option of using OOP or Procedural. Just like macro's can be
abused, so can OOP, and I would like to have liked the option of using
macros. (Pascal does not allow it either:-(

I know I could have found these answers in books as well, but can you
imagine investing in something that will not even do what you can do
already?

Cheers,
Harry Marx.
UNISA
South Africa