4 ms·
I never thought the .NET Framework did enough complexity hiding to justify a 60MB installed size, especially if it was just providing a bit of plumbing to get y
by dmethvin 14y ago
I never thought the .NET Framework did enough complexity hiding to justify a 60MB installed size, especially if it was just providing a bit of plumbing to get you back down to the COM level.
Most COM interfaces support late binding, so you can easily call them from a language like JavaScript, which is already installed in Windows as part of the platform. Ten years before node.js existed, you could run this JavaScript on Windows 2000 to read and print a file:
var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
if ( fso.FileExists("myfile.txt") ) {
var ts = fso.OpenTextFile("myfile.txt", ForReading);
WScript.Echo(ts.ReadAll());
WScript.Quit(0);
} else {
WScript.Echo("File Not Found");
WScript.Quit(1);
}
- tedunangst 14y agoThe .NET framework is more than just a bit of COM plumbing.
- dguaraglia 14y agoWell, that's a facetious argument if I've ever seen one :). .NET does a lot more than just interface with COM or the Windows API. VB (pre .NET days) had much better integration with OLE/COM and the runtimes were like 1mb in size at worst. I've always thought of COM as one of those almost brilliant pieces of technology that somehow got completely ignored. Of course, it's still commonplace in the Windows world, but the concept facilitates reusability so much, it's a shame it wasn't adopted by other platforms.
- brusch 14y agoI think Mozilla used something similar in Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/XPCOM https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/XPCOM Other than that I don't know any other companies who did something like COM.