FAQ 35.08 What is the most important message of this chapter?

CORBA is nontrivial and requires serious effort, even for experienced C++ programmers.

Because CORBA's Interface Definition Language (IDL) looks so similar to C++, many programmers assume that CORBA doesn't have a steep learning curve. This is far from the truth, and most of this chapter is dedicated to showing why there are and have to be major differences between C++ and CORBA. Most of these differences are inherent in any approach to distributed objects.

Also, it's important to understand where CORBA fits into the grand scheme of things. It offers critical middleware and useful components for developing major systems, but the technical differences between the various CORBA implementations or between CORBA and COM are usually less important than business considerations.