Concurrency - GUI Interoperability (Reactive and Interactive User Interface)

[mpostol]

I would like to talk about the following terms. Any feedback you can give me is welcome.

Interactive: it is a computer and computer user interface interoperability pattern user where one party of this interoperability triggers an action and expects a reaction from the other. An example of this kind of interoperability is a mouse clicking on a virtual button on the computer screen and expecting a reaction from the program responsible for rendering this button on the screen. According to the definition, it is a blocking relationship, hence the round trip latency should be minimized to keep the user interface responsive and react smoothly to the triggered action.

Reactive: it is a user of a computer and computer user interface interoperability pattern where one party of this interoperability triggers an action and doesn't expect a reaction from the other one. An example of this kind of interoperability is updating the current time on the watch control rendered on the screen. On the other hand, pressing a virtual button on the computer screen without any visual reaction is also reactive interoperability but it should be avoided because it makes the user interface nonresponsive - it could be recognized as no response to the user demand. Because usually the GUI should be recognized as a critical section, its interoperability with any underlying activity must be synchronized. It depends on the framework used to implement the interoperability.