> I can think of lots of other examples, like how VB, Delphi and C++ Builder interfaced with COM in the mid-90's.
One curious thing is how similar Swift is to modern Pascal, ie Delphi. It has many other influences, and it is certainly not Pascal with another syntax, but reading the Apple guide when Swift was released gave frequent moments of deja-vu.
On the subject of COM, yes. If you think COM means ATL you should try it in a language designed to work with interfaces and reference counting inbuilt - Delphi has COM interfaces as first-class language primitives, and a heap of classes and other code making COM quite straightforward. Much of this even spills into C++Builder, though since it's a different language it's not as clean as in Delphi. Still miles past ATL though.
Re ARC: I think the thing that makes it appealing is it's conceptually simple, completely deterministic, and can be traced by reading code rather than understanding an environment's implementation. Delphi does ARC now too, and if you've ever wanted ARC in C++, C++Builder optionally supports it for some classes. ARC is not yet on Windows for either language, we're talking just iOS, Android and soon Linux here.
(Disclosure: I recently started working at Embarcadero on C++Builder. This is a personal comment only. But liking the languages Embarcadero makes was one main reason I joined.)