Java developers

My ex-classmate-cum-close friend called me this afternoon, they will be working on a learning system for one of the city colleges. The usual: delivering the curriculum online (now that's the easy part..just HTML and stuffs), learning assessment (with the standard feature set where the answers/options get shuffled), and a scorecard, with all the students' grades (and assessment questions) on a central database (which i dunno what platform they're using). They wanted to get settled with Java and Swing, but I told them rolling out such a big application could only spell d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r, knowing how much overhead Swing makes, add to that the database factor and BAM!! So I suggested going with JSP (or servlets, if they're feeling adventurous). The one with use in my own company was done with JSP (no idea what DB platform though), but it's a biiiiiig computer manufacturer (there you go..) and the [web] application keeps records of customers all over the world, plus it's being used not just in our local center, but all throughout the offshore centers as well. Considering that, and the satisfactory performance I have experienced with JSPs, such was my suggestion.

I also opened up the possibility of doing the same thing, but with the .NET platform, but they might run into licensing problems (and how EXPENSIVE MS's software can be in the enterprise environment; that, VS. free Java).

Why Java vs. .NET you ask? Because that's about the only 2 platforms we were taught in school, (and we've just finished school two months ago!! yay!!).

I just wanted to confirm if my analysis of Swing vs. JSP (see abovem first paragraph) is true. Any suggestion/insight will be highly appreciated. Thanks so much.

Why do all applications produced using Swing/AWT tend to look alike, and clunky?
Could someone have come up with a better design/visual feel than monotone gray/boxy?

Or am I just seeing the worst of the pack? Specifically, today I'm looking at the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console. Just seems that a ton of Java apps look unprofessional due to the clunky feel of the defaults...

I have a bit of a disagreement with a fellow developer at work on logging libraries.

He wanted to introduce use of Commons Logging for our current development, however I've kept on using Log4j as we've used on several previous projects. My opinion is that Commons Logging suffers from being a 'lowest common denominator', and complicates matters by introducing extra configuration and indirection.

What do you think? Have you used either or both on your projects?
(I'm not asking people to resolve our dispute, by the way, just interested in opinions).