In the early days of Java, application development with the Abstract
Window Toolkit (AWT) was relatively simple. You needed a decent
understanding of Java and AWT fundamentals, but once equipped with
such knowledge you could dive in and develop some impressive
applications in a short amount of time.

Ten years later, we have, in so many respects, gone significantly
backwards. We've shoehorned technologies such as HTML into shoes for
which they were never intended, and ...