iunknown

what's your opinion on IUnknown?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUnknown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

Would you choose to use such an interface/design yourself?

>>1

The lack of replies should tell you everything. No coder under 40 knows this retarded DEC-originated Microsoft shit, and it's just a bad memory from the 1990's for those over 40.

Of course, it's still in Windows, under the hood. If you look in the Class ID areas of the Registry, they are densely populated.

>>2
I'm 37 and I know about it.  But I avoid it like the fucking plague.  The first time I encountered that shit was the first time I started to have doubts about OOP in general.

Let Microsoft try to recreate Smalltalk or Lisp in C++, and this is what happens.

>>2,3

Yeah, I have only seen it used in a few times. I find it interesting though. If I was to implement arbitrary interfaces in C, I might have tried an implementation similar to iunknown, where one would query an object with an interface id, and then get back a structure of function pointers that implement the interface for that object. But I've seen IUnknown reinvented and used in applications that are nothing but seeples, and I don't understand why someone wouldn't just rely on oo provided through the language in such a case.

>>5
Because sepples don't have a standardized ABI, and also can lead to some very fun stuff with dynamically loaded libraries.

>>6
I see. That makes sense. I suppose the interface structures could be modified/created at run time as well.

http://www.microsoft.com/com/images/ref_home_hero.jpg