Question

I am seeing some behavior I really do not understand. In the first bit of code, when run() is called, the JFrames pop up, and the JPanels populate. In the second bit of code, the JFrames pop up but the JFrames do not populate and the windows seem irresponsive.

final Class g = TowerView.class
final ArrayList<Class> s = (ArrayList<Class>) sorters.clone();
final Quantifiable [] d = InventoryItem.getRandomArray(SIZE); 
run (s, g, d);

This does NOT work:

final Class g = TowerView.class
final ArrayList<Class> s = (ArrayList<Class>) sorters.clone();
final Quantifiable [] d = InventoryItem.getRandomArray(SIZE); 
runButton.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent event) {
        run(s, g, d);  
    }
});

Answer 1

You need to do the operation inside event listener i.e, run(s,g,d) command in another thread.

Excerpt from http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/events/generalrules.html

The most important rule to keep in mind about event listeners is that
they should execute very quickly. Because all drawing and
event-listening methods are executed in the same thread, a slow
event-listener method can make the program seem unresponsive and slow
to repaint itself. If you need to perform some lengthy operation as
the result of an event, do it by starting up another thread (or
somehow sending a request to another thread) to perform the operation.
For help on using threads, see Concurrency in Swing.