Re: BridgeWorks

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 23:00:00 +0100, John Dallman wrote:

In article <v7pn6l$1ig94$2@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:
 

*From:* Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
*Date:* Wed, 24 Jul 2024 01:59:49 -0000 (UTC)
 
On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 20:16:40 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
 

If you look at third party COM components used by VB6 and VBS back in
the late 90's and early 00's, then most of it are gone.

 
If they were open-source, at least someone else could take over
development/maintenance after the original creators have gone
bust/given up.
 
Of course, trying to do open-source on top of an inherently proprietary
platform does pose its own challenges.

 
Sure does. As an Intel engineer said to me: "COM is not only a weird
meta-API designed to contort your code into forms where you'd have to
re-write from scratch to run it on anything else. It does that job fine,
but it also has positive features."
 
Writing COM components was a /lot/ harder than consuming them. Microsoft
decided to replace it with .NET, over twenty years ago. They tried to
bring it back in WinRT, but that did not achieve significant acceptance
or market share, and is dead.
 
John

*Windows RT* is dead.

WinRT is very much alive and well, being expanded over time, and destined
to replace Win32 entirely for any modern usage.

Of course, the naming scheme is ..... not the best, as all the confusion
you've probably seen around the two drastically different things. Windows
RT == ARM build of windows locked down ala S-mode on W10/11, WinRT =
runtime system libraries consumable by "Metro" apps on 8/8.1 and all
applications and languages from 10 on up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Runtime

Almost all my new development makes WinRT calls and consumes a ton of new
APIs. Yes, it is COM based, but it is *so much nicer* and i'm no longer
having to drop into COM/DCOM to control a PTZ camera, for example.

I'd say that usage of WinRT functionality is *far* more widespread than
you may realize, especially now with Win10 being the baseline minimum of
currently supported OSes, so you don't have to question if it will be
present or not. Along with what I stated above, WinRT API calls have
*greatly* reduced the size of my codebases as well. It's absolutely
painful sometimes when I have to work "before WinRT" and implement things
like IPv6 support in XP applications....