I interrupt the heavy metal for some Java-related content. This forms part of my argument in a discussion currently taking place at work. My contention is that the wisdom of this article applies as much to native code used in "enterprise" systems (such as a legacy application that can only be accessed through a DLL interface) as it does to GUI toolkits.

JNI is the standard mechanism used by all Java programs to invoke code written in C. SWT goes one step further by enforcing a one-to-one mapping between Java native methods and operating system calls. The fact that this mapping is strictly enforced is one of the most critical factors in the success of SWT.