Confused about interfaces in D

[Bryan Power]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> 
> When it's derived from IUnknown, a special case put in to support COM
> interfaces on Win32.
> I've not heard anyone voice support for this particular design decision.
> I suppose it's very convenient if you happen to be a COM programmer,
> but I'm not sure why a vendor-specific technology like COM should get
> such special treatment in a language spec.
> 
> --bb

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> The issue is totally with COM.
> 
> Without the requirement for any interface to possibly be a COM interface, 
> all interfaces would implicitly inherit from ObjectInterface or some 
> interface that always has the functions required in Object defined (e.g. 
> toString()).
>> 
> But COM objects don't have the same base functions as Object does, so 
> interfaces have no required base functions.  Making life difficult for those 
> who never ever work with COM (and I can't say I blame them, COM sucks).
> 
> -Steve  

A fair bit of extended API functionality on Windows is presented via 
COM. This includes very important API sets like DirectX, which is 
implemented via COM. A bonus of COM is that it allows use of the API in 
its OOP form in C++ while still allowing the API to be used in 
procedural languages like IA32, C and Pascal without any hacks or tricks.

Even Mozilla has their own COM implementation.

While I admit COM can be messy at times, I use it almost daily for my 
work, and since I am free to use the languages of my choosing I 
generally use D. This interface feature allows me to port COM 
definitions from the C/C++ headers to D seamlessly
and quickly:

interface IWbemObjectSink : IUnknown {}

for example.

I am all for the COM compatibility.