Interestingly, no mention of WTL
I originally had ATL in there, but my proofreading squad (Claude and ChatGPT) told me that ATL was a more niche thing for COM, and looking at the Wikipedia article I was convinced they were right.
But WTL was what I was thinking of---the step between the MFC and .NET that I forgot.
With all due respect (seriously): fuck off man
This is why you don’t use these stupid fucking tools for this
...but they were correct. The GP just didn't remember the proper name and asked about a different thing.