I recall that it was very awkward, and somehow prone to memory leaks, and unclosed resources. To this day, I still don't really understand what COM is, or is supposed to be. But I still have a negative visceral reaction.

Maybe some excerpts from the documentation[1]:

"COM specifies an object model and programming requirements that enable COM objects (also called COM components, or sometimes simply objects) to interact with other objects. These objects can be within a single process, in other processes, and can even be on remote computers. They can be written in different languages, and they may be structurally quite dissimilar, which is why COM is referred to as a binary standard; a standard that applies after a program has been translated to binary machine code."

"The only language requirement for COM is that code is generated in a language that can create structures of pointers and, either explicitly or implicitly, call functions through pointers."

"Besides specifying the basic binary object standard, COM defines certain basic interfaces that provide functions common to all COM-based technologies, and it provides a small number of functions that all components require."

[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/com/the-compo...

Edit: I should add that C# isn’t the best language for COM because it doesn’t release objects when they go out of scope so you either have to release everything manually or wait for the GC to kick in which can cause memory problems. VB and C++ and even PHP are better that way.

I thought COM was meant to communicate between processes?

Any enlightenment is appreciated...

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

All operating systems have some sort of object model and sharing API's, but neither macOS nor Linux have anywhere near the thriving ecosystem and actual cooperation model between applications that Windows has.

Rather unfortunate, because with GIR you could easily have a program written in a mix of Rust, C, Go, C++, Vala, etc. all playing nicely if they were all able to expose to the common object model.

When I was a kid, I used to make VB6 applications, and I'd be able to get custom widgets from the Internet, and import them into my VB6 project seamlessly. It was truly amazing, and mind-expanding.

The JS/React/etc web ecosystem doesn't come anywhere close, in terms of the ease-of-use that VB6 had.