A Brave New World
As you've seen throughout this book, there's no doubt that the .NET environment and C# language combine to form a powerful means of building componentized systems. However, what about the tons of existing reusable COM components that you've built through the last few years-not to mention all those cups of coffee and sleepless nights? Does .NET spell the end for those components? Will they work hand-in-hand with the .NET managed runtime? For those of us who program with COM for a living, and for those who live by the "COM is good" mantra, there is great news. COM is here to stay, and .NET framework-managed applications can leverage existing COM components. As you're about to see, classic COM components interoperate with the .NET runtime through an interoperability layer (COM Interop) that handles all the plumbing for messages passed between the managed runtime and the COM components operating in the unmanaged realm.