I would be so happy if they ditched IDL, or at very least improved its development experience, specially with the excuse to wait for C++ reflection to give back the experience of using C++/CX with C++/WinRT, means I will probably retire before they even bother to start.
Comments
You forgot C++/CX, WRL and C++/WinRT on your list.
Yep it is that bad.
The problem with ATL is that it is stuck in the Visual C++ 6.0 tooling experience.
The alternatives aren't much better though, although WIL seems to be the less painful to use, if we ignore all that UWP stuff.
WRL is by far the best of the bunch. Instead of
WE_ARE_THE_ATL(MACRO_POINTER$(##PLEASEREGISTER ^& CLASS))
you have
class ListenerCallback : public RuntimeClass<RuntimeClassFlags<ClassicCom>, IWhateverListenerInterface
[...]
CoCreatableClass(ListenerCallback);
I would be so happy if they ditched IDL, or at very least improved its development experience, specially with the excuse to wait for C++ reflection to give back the experience of using C++/CX with C++/WinRT, means I will probably retire before they even bother to start.