Reaction vs MUI (as what concerns the API)

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Well, great then. Discussion over.

Oh wait .. I have to buy a Mac now because: "It is a well known fact that Mac OS X is far superior to any operating system from every possible pov."

Hmmm, well Cocoa is more lovely than either MUI or Reaction... But that wasn't the question, to which the answer is MUI

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I prefer C++ to Obj-C.  Cocoa provides a very nice set of classes but Obj-C is from the devil.

For me it's all about the right tool for the job... When doing low-level microcontroller work, I want C++... When doing high-level application development I love Obj-C, though I admit that over 60% of Obj-C's appeal comes from the maturity and elegance of Cocoa (really OpenStep).

Due to the rigid enforcement of design patterns in Cocoa and Obj-C programs can still be understood if the code has been ignored for nearly a year!
C++ offers too much freedom, I look back on a project written in C++ and spend a good deal oftime trying to figure out what I did and why, the comments only help so far :-/ (this is my limitation not C++).

The Amiga misses a tool as powerful as Interface Builder, also I don't know if any of the Amiga toolkits have a common inheritance from a single UIview class like cocoa does... That is a very important design advantage!

I type this from my 17" Macbook Pro 4,1 (and looking over my shoulder at the 3 Cocoa and 2 Obj-C books on my shelves.)

I really need to get a Cocoa book, I rely too much on learning from examples, often I'll not realise there is already a class/protocol/method that does what I want

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When doing high level application development I use very expensive proprietary tools. As you say, each job requires a different tool.

For good Cocoa books you could do worse than these http://www.bignerdranch.com/books
Very well written and informative they are.

The very same books recommended to me by my (rather more successful) iPhone developer friend

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Assembly is usually better suited for that.

For PIC work, yes, but my Atmel and ARM microcontrollers are well supported with C/C++ compilers.

With the atmel AVRMega328 (my favourite 8bit), I use a mixture of C and assembler (it has a really elegant ISA)... But withe my ARM M3 chips it is almost 90% C++

On my iPhone Dev work I use obj-c

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I have two of them and they are a joy to read, I just feel "uncomfortable" writing ObjC.  To me it similar to blonde hair and white skin on a woman, does nothing for me.

Ain't choice great?

My tastes in women depend on the woman in question... I've been with my current girl friend for nary 3 years and she's Chinese!

I really understand where you are coming from with Obj-C! I totally hated it, I just couldn't get used to the syntax and the odd terms for things. But I realise now that my biggest problem came from thinking too low level, I didn't like being forced into MVC and Delegate patterns, I didn't realised Obj-C has runtime features I'm not used to in Asm and C++, frankly I just couldn't understand how my classes fitted into the anatomy of a program... It was only after forcing myself to plough on with it (I had to make an iPhone app, failure was not an option) that I got it... I'm by a long way a much better coder for learning the rules that Obj-C demands

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Getting back to the topic (sorry we got carried far away to sideline) I think notification system is one of strong points in MUI API. You can add callback hooks and methods to events so you dont have to mess with this in your event loop. It also allows simple automation of events i.e. when user presses a button MUI could automatically window title for example.

If Reaction lacks notification then I would consider it obsolete! I think this answers the OP question, MUI is the more modern design.

Another difference in MUI is that you can define window or context menus as objects. You dont necessarily have to define static menu structure (but you can if you want to). They can be used to store attributes and they are part of notification system so menu selections can be automated just like everything else. You can expand and shrink menus simply by adding or removing objects from them.

MUI wins, topic closed

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@Karlos

A quick read through, suggests that a fair few of these design patterns are easier to implement with Obj-C... Or at least to me seem more natural in Obj-C than in C++... This isn't a criticism of C++, simply an observation. I submit that this could be due to Obj-C's dependence on the cocoa framework which seems to have been built with only this book as reference! But I feel Obj-C's runtime nature is key here