I suspect delegates can be confusing because they're not used particularly consistently. When designing an Objective-C class, how do you know when you should you use a delegate, a data source (which is a specialized delegate), or a notification? There's no particular rhyme or reason to their use within AppKit itself. Yes, I, with 10 years experience in Objective-C can give you general guidelines, but it's no help when you're actually learning the framework.