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From: Gary Sparkes <mokuba@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: BridgeWorks
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2024 04:37:50 -0000 (UTC)
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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....