David Jeske had vented over the Java sub-culture that REQUIRES 100% Java!. These are people who believe that SWT is evil, or writing native code is evil.
I am a strong supporter of David on this one. I have seen a bunch of projects pass on by Java because of issues with AWT/Swing. I have seen small productivity tests that compared Java/Swing to Python/wxWindows.
I think there is definitely room to offer a choice to developers.
a) Swing: you want it to run everywhere? Go for it.
b) Native: Your office is all Windows and will be for a long time? You want to reuse already developed components? Use jwxWindows and run like the wind.
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe that Swing apps can cut it. A lot of modern tools show that Swing has grown leaps and bounds (mmm IntelliJ IDEA). But I still think that there should be a choice!