title: What happens to the main application thread?
body: <p>As far as I know, there are 3 threads in a Swing GUI application:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>the <em>main application thread</em>, which executes the <code>main()</code> method</li>
  <li>the <em>toolkit thread</em>, which receives the system events</li>
  <li>the <em>event dispatching thread</em>, dedicated to the painting and event handling of the GUI stuff</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Generally, the main method just makes a call to <code>SwingUtilities#invokeLater(Runnable)</code> in order to initialize a window and so on, thus the GUI initialization is made on the EDT... BTW, as far as I know (again), everything that touches the GUI must be executed on the EDT...</p>
  
  <p>Questions: What is the <em>main thread</em> used / usable for? Does it just die after the call to <code>invokeLater()</code>? Does it consume resources? Can I (and is it a good practice to) use it to perform... I don't know... Network stuff?</p>