Architecture · 1991–2008 · Object Wave
CORBA
Language-agnostic distributed objects. Complexity scaled faster than value for most shops.
Why CORBA became a costly fad
CORBA promised universal reuse and delivered universal integration hell. IDL compilers, vendor ORBs, and governance boards ate budgets while HTTP got a curl client. It failed because objects do not magically compose across organizational boundaries.
Cost of the fad
What CORBA cost
Enterprises spent years on IDL, ORBs, and vendor lock-in for distributed objects that SOAP and REST later made look quaint — after the invoices cleared.
Patterns
Compare with
Related
Architecture · 2003–2015
Enterprise SOA
Reuse via shared services — in theory. In practice: central buses and political ownership fights.
$ ESBs, governance boards, and "service portfolios" burned seven-figure programs. Many orgs got distributed monoliths with worse latency and a permanent integration team.
Language · 1995–now
Java
Write once, run everywhere — then enterprise forever. Still the backbone of serious backend estates.
Architecture · 2000–2016
SOAP / WS-*
Enterprise web services with ceremony. Interoperability theater with XML envelopes.
$ Banks and governments sunk fortunes into WS-Security, WSDL toolchains, and vendor stacks — then quietly rebuilt on REST/JSON while still paying maintenance on the old bus.