> power of COM [...], and what could have if we'd had proper object technology today.
Editors which can always crash, because they are as stable as the least stable plugin? Formulas you can no longer edit because you do not have that specific formula editor installed? Completely closed and proprietary binary storage formats? Security as weak as the weakest app installed on your machine?
Granted, in the 1990's, COM was probably a pretty good thing -- it was very fast and efficient, at the expense of stability. Today, I'd prefer different tradeoff -- stable, secure and open; and if I have to wait 5 seconds for my auto-rendered markdown to get updated, it's OK, I can do so.