[pjmlp]

As someone that does Windows since version 3.0 I am quite curious what those would be.

Forms and WPF?

Forms is in maintainance mode, and WPF builds on top of COM via DirectX 9.

MFC?

Likewise maintainance mode.

WinRT and UWP/WinUI 2.0?

COM + IInspectable + .NET metadata + AppSandboxing

WinUI 3.0?

COM + IInspectable + .NET metadata

MAUI?

Built on top of WinUI 3.0

[imron]

Not sure how this disagrees with my statement that "you can write a modern windows GUI app without really needing to touch COM directly because there are other abstractions built on those APIs"

[pjmlp]

It is like turtles but COM.

[imron]

Glad we agree then that it permeates the lower levels of windows programming.