Learning the Framework is definitely an incremental process!
I read the new "Beyond (COM) Add Reference: Has Anyone Seen the Bridge?" article yesterday and, was quite impressed by the detailed groundwork that was laid-out to explain the differences between COM and CLR and, how Interop provides a bridge for seamlessly calling in and out of both environments. As the author states in that article the real meat is still to come so, if you are reading this and you haven't already read that article scoot over now and give it a look - you won't be disappointed.
I'm really looking forward to having Interop explained to me, not so much because the "Add COM reference" behaviour in VS.NET doesn't work - it does! - but more because I know that someday I'll be involved in a project where Interop will go wrong and I want to have some idea of what I'm dealing with. What's more, having the classes in the System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace explained will add yet another tick to the namespaces that I've taken the time to learn about ;-)
After reading that article, I stumbled across this blog entry that would have meant very little to me had I not read the Interop article (which I suppose serves to validate the fact that my knowledge store has increased).
Bonus Msdn rating system rant...
One thing that confounds me is the ratings system on Msdn. When you rate an article (as I did with this one) you are asked to leave a message indicating your thoughts about the article. I wish that Microsoft would make these comments visible as it would provide a better insight into the overall rating. For example, the guy who rated Sam's article a 1 out of 9 - it would be insightful (and add perspective) to see *why* he thought that it smelled *that* bad. Also, if you rate an item more than 5 points above or below the current average, it should be moderated (based on the comment that is left) as to whether it actually gets added, this would add integrity to the overall rank.
(Listening To: Clubbed to Death (Kurayamino Version) [Rob Dugan / Chillout Sessions Vol 4])