Learning COM from the Visual Basic Perspective

I started my trek through COM in the spring of 1995, when resources about COM for Visual Basic programmers didn't exist. Everything I read and studied about COM was written by C++ programmers for C++ programmers. I had to learn C++ just to learn COM. Fortunately, I became associated with a talented group of computer scientists at DevelopMentor who were willing to teach me about COM and C++ at the same time.

While learning C++ was infinitely important to my understanding of COM, it seemed odd to me that there were no COM resources for the non-C++ crowd. C++ takes a long time to learn. It's an intimidating mixture of assembly language and advanced object-oriented syntax. Learning C++ seemed like a fairly unrealistic requirement for Visual Basic programmers who wanted to learn about COM. After all, if Microsoft wanted to preach COM as a language-independent technology, the rest of us needed better resources. This was my primary motivation for writing this book.