Shane, we are using COM for some pretty serious Enterprise development. When you are building a major application using MSFT technology and products, you do it Bill's way. Having spent the last 9 months writing OCX's and out of Proc servers, I really do not feel that COM is that difficult. The worst part is the lack of good documentation on MSFT's part. It seems that every major design effort takes a few weeks of discovery on our part to figure out a specific interface or technology (i.e. connection points, etc.).
We have not used VB yet. We are using C++ Builder for our administration GUI's and MS Dev for the COM programming. It works pretty well. The only problem I am having with C++ Builder is the difficulty in finding contract programers with experience. VB programmers are a .10 a dozen. For that reason, we may move some of our GUI work to VB. Note that we use MFC + Extensions for our cient GUI's.
The best thing about COM is that it plugs into any Windows Programming env (i.e. Delphi, C++ B, MS C++, VB, etc.). We are no tied to any one development tool any more. Try building compiler independent code in straight C++. Also, in general, our SW is nicely componetized, and relatively bug free (in relation to normal C/C++ products).
For COM novices (with a few $$ to burn), I recommend the Guerilla Com course by Developmentor. Spend 1 week in Sunny LA, and immerse yourself in COM development (12 hours /day. We had the Developmentor class here, and it made a big difference. Once you are up to speed in COM, it is not that difficult (but always arcane).
David |
