I think Microsoft actually did a reasonable job with the "original" COM (ie OLE 2.0 - the stuff that let you put an Excel 95 spreadsheet into a Word 95 document

I think Microsoft actually did a reasonable job with the "original" COM (ie OLE 2.0 - the stuff that let you put an Excel 95 spreadsheet into a Word 95 document). It had a bit too much bolted on, probably due to its origins in OLE, and I think "dynamic OLE" was a tragic mistake. And its reference counting approach was a lot more appropriate in the early 90s than it is today (where a compacting GC may be the smart choice, performance-wise). But for making calls between objects in C, C++, VB6, Delphi, and pretty much every other language that lived on the Windows platform, it worked really well.