Newbie switching from TCL

[Alex Martelli]

"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...?).  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.

No different than any other backwards-compatibility issue, really.


Alex