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In the world I'm living in, corporate IT, there's a ton of COM and SOAP. I don't see COM running across the Internet (other than thru VPN tunnels), but I see a

In the world I'm living in, corporate IT, there's a ton of COM and SOAP. I don't see COM running across the Internet (other than thru VPN tunnels), but I see a ton of SOAP for interop with third-party interfaces. Pretty much any of the "enterprise" Java-based apps I work adjacent to have SOAP-based interfaces. COM is alive and well in the LAN space, too. I see it in industrial automation under the guise of OPC, fairly frequently, too.

nine_k 1y ago
Also, providing and consuming a basic COM interface is quite easy with Miscrosoft's development tools. This is not true in other ecosystems. So COM did not fail as a standard, it just failed to conquer the whole world. It's doing fine though in its natural habitat.
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
  I remember going to a class at Embedded Systems Conference that showed how to implement a COM interface in assembly on a microcontroller. Was cool, but I had no use for that, although we were using COM/DCOM at the higher levels.
  - EvanAnderson 1y ago
    That sounds cool, though. Seeing protocols/formats/algorithms laid bare in assembly code makes them comprehensible in a way that I don't get from high level language implementations, where I have to either be content in just hand-waving away understand any "sugar" the language itself implements, or also having to understand the language's contrivances on top of whatever the core thing is I'm trying to understand.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I have a different experience writing and using COM with C++. I remember ugliness around reference counting, dealing with the literally dozen of methods of defining a string and having to coerce them into BSTRs and having to deal with variant types that were a weird C union type.
smj-edison 1y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am just now realizing that just because I don't hear about SOAP very often doesn't mean it isn't still around.

nine_k 1y ago

Also, providing and consuming a basic COM interface is quite easy with Miscrosoft's development tools. This is not true in other ecosystems. So COM did not fail as a standard, it just failed to conquer the whole world. It's doing fine though in its natural habitat.

HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
I remember going to a class at Embedded Systems Conference that showed how to implement a COM interface in assembly on a microcontroller. Was cool, but I had no use for that, although we were using COM/DCOM at the higher levels.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago
  That sounds cool, though. Seeing protocols/formats/algorithms laid bare in assembly code makes them comprehensible in a way that I don't get from high level language implementations, where I have to either be content in just hand-waving away understand any "sugar" the language itself implements, or also having to understand the language's contrivances on top of whatever the core thing is I'm trying to understand.
scarface_74 1y ago
I have a different experience writing and using COM with C++. I remember ugliness around reference counting, dealing with the literally dozen of methods of defining a string and having to coerce them into BSTRs and having to deal with variant types that were a weird C union type.

smj-edison 1y ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. I am just now realizing that just because I don't hear about SOAP very often doesn't mean it isn't still around.