What does Python fix?

[Courageous]

>i've been away from java for a while.
>is swing still built on top of the pathetic AWT?

No, although I'm not sure if they broke away completely. If you
want an alternative and use windows take a look at "SWT" from the
Alphaworks folks at IBM. It's a native toolkit. It's _fast_.

The disadvantage is that for some reason the X11 version is
slow. Or at least so they say. I haven't used it.

Presumably, the X11 version will get faster. Note that it's based
on JNI libraries, so it's not cross platform at all. 

C//