Is it worth to learn COM?

Question

I am thinking to learn COM.But I heard that Microsoft launched .NET as an alternative to COM. So is it worth to learn COM? actually I started learning COM for UMDF device driver. Is there any alternate way to work on UMDF except COM?

Answer 1

COM is old, tedious and frustrating. I don't think anyone has ever enjoyed working with COM. So generally, I'd recommend against learning it unless you have a really compelling reason. If there is a COM library out there that you need to use, I'd instead learn how to use it through COM interop, which enables you to work with COM from .NET.