We’re not going to get very far with Windows game programming without using COM as DirectX, DirectInput and anything else Microsoft is going to want to use it. For those lucky enough to not have used it, COM is a way of passing classes around irrespective of what language they are written in and so seems really compilicated when you look at it. As with a lot of things this isn’t really true, it’s actually quite simple as long as you’re just consuming objects and there are a plethora of smart pointers out there in order to help you use them.