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The real question is probably "Is COM a bad idea?" And I don't think it is. But COM itself was such a pain to deal with. Notably all of my time with it was spe
by rezonant 3y ago
The real question is probably "Is COM a bad idea?"
And I don't think it is. But COM itself was such a pain to deal with. Notably all of my time with it was spent from within .NET so maybe it was less painful in C++-- but .NET was at least partially designed to work well with COM. Insert crying emoji.
(Of course I think Microsoft intended us to stop using COM and instead use SOAP, but that didn't happen)
- alternative_a 3y agoSOAP is an object access protocol. COM is an component object model. How is SOAP providing a component model?
- flohofwoe 3y agoThe only really important and surviving part of COM isn't the "component model idea", but that COM enables versioned interfaces and dynamic linking with a stable ABI for high level languages that usually don't have a stable ABI (like C++) by defining a standard of how high level language concepts can be tunneled through a regular C API.
- pjmlp 3y agoWhich is even overlooked is how similar ideas have been adopted in Apple and Google platforms (XPC, IO/Driver Kit, AIDL/Binder, FIDL/zircon), less so in GNU/Linux as not all distributions rely on D-BUS for similar ideas.
- pjmlp 3y agoSince Vista that COM is the main delivery mechanism for new Windows APIs.