Re: GNOME & KOM/OP

[Miles Egan <cullen best com>]

On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, Todd Graham Lewis wrote:

> for more info:
> 
> 	http://www.microsoft.com/oledev/

Somewhat ironically, this site is no longer maintained and redirects the
reader to Microsoft's COM page.

I've done enough COM/Active-X/OLE coding to come to the conclusion that
the design idea may not be bad, but it's implementation in windows is
completely FUBAR.  Just try writing a multithreaded COM application,
especially one involving IDispatch. 

I'm also not particularly impressed with the things Microsoft has done
with OLE so far.  For example, opening a word file from within developer
studio results in word hijacking devstudio - inserting it's window and
menus into the devstudio shell.  This is slow and, to me, seems and
awkward - a sort of frankenstein application. 

It's also interesting to note that Microsoft itself is very actively
downplaying both OLE and ActiveX these days, choosing instead to
evangelize COM.  Interviews with MS executives on the subject have a
surprisingly confessional tone.  All the windows developers I work with
think of OLE as a confusing monstrosity and avoid learning anything more
about it than is absoultely necessary.  The definite OLE book,
Brockschmidt's _Inside OLE_ is widely regarded among the developers I know
as one of the densest, most cryptic, and least pleasant to read of all of
the MS press books.

All this is not to say that I think it's a bad idea to model GOM after
OLE2.  I worries me a bit because I'm not convinced it's been that much of
a success in windows and because I think there are a lot of pitfalls in
its implementation.  At least we've got one bad example to avoid.

Miles