Is C++ and COM still relevent

Most of the people who join as freshers in my company ask this question sometime or other. Most of the applications we develop nowadays is generally in .Net and when they start to learn the nuissances of this new platform, they want to know how best they can go about learning it. Most of the guidance they get is to catch hold of a famous authors book or to consult MSDN quick samples and to get started. well, i agree if you want to learn a concept in most primitive way and still able to create applications then it looks fine. But its like trying to be a Zidane in one month after starting football.

The only way you can master and understand any technologyis to go in depth into its basics. .Net platform was not a discovery done at one shot, it is the final culmination of 30 years of software progression and is built upon numerous technologies, so when you want to master it, it takes lots of effort and reading into these foundation elements. Its a pity to see programmers nowadays offfered with the comfort they have, day one they see the Visual studio environment which allows them to create a running application in 5 seconds, according to me this is a complete disaster for a programmer in his initial years, he starts to look into the API provided in the MSDN and goes about programming within a month, resulting in increasing productivities for his company, but in reality he is no better than an computer operator who is trained to do a particular job and when a new programming platform comes he starts this cycle once again.

For me if you want to be a real programmer, you should be first very strong in your basics,
Operating system working and atleast some knowledge of C++ programming and bit of knowledge about the hardware will not hurt. if you are writing any serious Component based applications then a small investment in the COM, DCOM and Corba is a Must. without knowing the shortcomings and forte of these technologies, you can never grasp any technolgies which are built on their learnings.

"You should know the Past, to Build the future !"

Coming back to the initial question of relevence of C++ and COM, YES !! they are still highly relevent to all of us, not because still 80-90% of the good software out there (atleast on MS platforms) are done using these, but these are the main foundation blocks on which new technolgies are built upon, go and dust off those old C++ and COM books and start reading today.

Here are few good COM links

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/com/html/a3b78086-0f02-4b3f-a856-46bfcf4457f4.asp

http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_ole.html


Recommended Books
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Essential COM, By DonBox

Inside COM, By Dale Rogerson

Some Good Artciles
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http://www.codeproject.com/script/articles/list_articles.asp?userid=24366
http://www.codeproject.com/com/comintro.asp