This is one of the things about Microsoft APIs that gets me. They all depend on ... | Hacker News

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bitwize on March 31, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: You Got Your Web Browser in my Compiler

This is one of the things about Microsoft APIs that gets me. They all depend on each other in weird ways that have less to do with practicality than they do with getting people on board to use the various Microsoft APIs. For example, DirectX depends on COM. It doesn't have to, but they're both Microsoft technologies so why not? You're going to need to learn how to use COM anyway; it's the future. Systemd is designed this way too; that's why I hate it, despite the fact that it won. It seems architected with a "getting people on board with using certain tools" mindset rather than orthogonally providing functionality.

But this... this takes the dependency tangle to whole new levels of comedy.

Negitivefrags on April 1, 2014 [–]

COM isn't really a API like DirectX is. It's a model for making APIs. Thus it makes sense that they would use it when creating an API.

I can understand your argument in the general case, certainly, but it doesn't apply very well to COM.

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