[pjmlp]

Except if you need to touch COM.

The RCW/CCW approach is much more low level, to the point there are whole books on how to use COM in .NET, whereas it was just part of how to program in VB (pre-.NET).

It also went through two reboots.

So now you have .NET COM support for .NET Framework, COM/WinRT support for UWP, modern .NET support for COM.

Every variation with its own APIs, only the classical .NET Framework approach has Visual Studio "import COM component" support, and none of them as easy as VB 6 was in the end.

Quite bad as developer experience, given the COM focus since Windows Vista.