Where is Motif used today?

It tends to be used in old software (i.e. software which has been around for a long time, not necessarily obsolete software); for example:

• Alliance
• DDD (OK, that one's probably obsolete)
• Geomview
• OpenDX
• Xpdf before version 4
• the Common Desktop Environment
• NEdit

For some reason lots of "scientific" software still uses Motif: ARB, ESO-MIDAS... And some software still supports Motif, although by default it doesn't use it any more: examples include Emacs and Vim.

I like it because it's (mostly) simple. If you're going to learn to program for X you need to use some widget set, Motif is probably less of a distraction from studying the underlying layers than say GTK or QT. And once you've learned the underlying stuff it's easier to see what's sitting on top of it as just that. Kind of like the more programming languages you know, the easier it is to learn another. So spending a semester learning it is akin to spending a semester with assembly language.

And I'm still writing with it, or trying to, because it's just a widget set, I'm satisfied with the way the widgets look and work.

Our complete (really big) system (www.invep.de) is completely written in Motif. It's under continuous development until today. I like Motif because it's very fast, absolutely stable and it's even possible to create a modern look and feel.