uDig GIS: A First Look (Linux Journal)

Good lord, don't remind me; I recently had to assess the viability of a project based on the Worldwind Java SDK, because it can't read shapefiles. A GIS program that can't read shapefiles...what are they thinking? There's a paucity of capabilities in the Java GIS world, in general; things which I use GDAL/OGR for as a matter of course, they end up hand-hacking together because they refuse to use JNI to interface with an outside library. Otherwise it might not be "100% pure Java".

Honestly, I see this again and again from Java GIS programs: they reinvent the wheel, and then, for reasons of "Java compatibility", insist that it be square.