here are numerous examples that demonstrate how to use/create COM/OLE/ActiveX components. But these examples typically use Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), .NET, C#, WTL, or at least ATL, because those frameworks have pre-fabricated "wrappers" to give you some boilerplate code. Unfortunately, these frameworks tend to hide all of the low level details from a programmer, so you never really do learn how to use COM components per se. Rather, you learn how to use a particular framework riding on top of COM