John E. Swanke has worked with COM since its inception. He also has over six years experience with Visual C++ and MFC creating CAD systems, network management, and computer telephony applications. He is an accomplished author having written articles on topics that range from reverse engineering to portability issues. John successfully established his teaching by example method with two MFC titles published in 1999: Visual C++ MFC Programming by Example and VC++ MFC Extensions by Example. He believes in the adage that an example is worth a kilobyte, i.e., each illustrative example is worth four or five times the amount of text it would take to illustrate the same technology. John is currently a program developer at NeuVis, Inc., in Shelton, Conn., and can be reached at jswankep@yahoo.com