Is COM truly dead?

Question

I have previously worked on COM, however I have observed for quite sometime that hardly any company asks for COM exp.

Is COM dead or reports of its demise are highly exaggerated?

Answer 1

COM is still widely used within Windows. Many of the new features within Windows are built upon a COM base as it is the main native code component model and Windows is primarily native code. But most non-system application development on Windows is now done in managed code so COM is less relevant (although accessible) as there are .NET framework wrappers. So it is definitely not dead but not that relevant for most people day to day.

Answer 2

To quote Don Box:

Is COM dead? It's not dead - it's done.

Because you can add a "COM Reference" to a lot of the Windows goodies that are presented as COM rather than flat APIs, a lot of managed code devs can ignore it. There are still scenarios where more detailed knowledge (controlling lifetimes or marshalling, implementing specific COM interfaces in managed code for the OS to call, etc) is needed, but they aren't day-to-day.

Answer 3

There's plenty of existing COM code out there that needs to be integrated with. Often it can be handled with COM wrappers, but the young upstarts have no awareness of the COM's constraints.

Its very rare to want to, or need to write a new COM object. Last time I did this was 2 years ago.

Answer 4

I wish...

That said, the only context I still have to deal with it in is essentially legacy. So I would say it's "dead" in about the same sense as classic VB is dead: few or no new projects are going to be done with it now and into the future. But legacy support and integration will still be around for quite some time.