That applies to SOM just as it does to COM.

Interesting to complain about one and then ignore exactly the same boilerplate for the other.

Leaving aside the fact that Microsoft's tooling for COM has already had multiple reboots between VB OCX, MFC, .NET Framework RCW/CCW, .NET ComWrappers, ATL, WRL, WIL, WinRT, each one with its share of astronomy.

No one uses the bare bones vtbl and nothing else.