Newbie switching from TCL

[Brett g Porter]

"Alex Martelli" <alex at magenta.com> wrote in message
news:8o2so401as1 at news2.newsguy.com...
> "Brett g Porter" <BgPorter at NOartlogicSPAM.com> wrote in message
> news:EqXo5.18407$e11.131857 at news1.rdc1.nj.home.com...
>     [snip]
> > > In this specific case, there are reasonable justifications for
> > > some of the architecture's complexities.  COM, the main level
> > > of access to the system's functionalities, is not all-pervasive:
> > > in particular, it does not extend all the way down to the kernel
> > > and other very low-level subsystems, because those systems
> > > predate the invention and spread of COM architecture.
> >
> > Actually, much of the WDM in Win2K and 98 depends on COM interfaces in
the
> > kernel. But that doesn't invalidate anything else you said...
>
> Thanks for the clarification!  I don't know much (read: zilch:-)
> about WDM, and the COM interfaces in the kernel (might you perhaps
> suggest an URL for me to learn about them...?).
Hmm. You want useful docs from Microsoft? <g>  A quick search through the
MSDN site didn't turn anything up that's small -- the only other resource I
can think of is the DDK. I'm sure that I've read articles on MSDN about
this, but perhaps I need more coffee before I'll be able to find them.

> What I meant, and
> could maybe have better expressed: kernel (&c) functionality needs to
> be exposed to applications in non-COM ways, even if the kernel itself
> becomes fully componentized in the future, because the kernel was
> there first, with its own non-object-oriented set of procedural
> API's to expose its functionality; applications may be written to
> that set of API's, so, to avoid breaking them, the 'API face' will
> need to remain for the foreseeable future.
Yes -- the most awkward part of writing C or C++ apps for windows right now
is the required mix of C API calls with all the post-95 COM APIs. Yuck.