My first job out of school was a developer job, but for the first few months they asked me to do some general sciency stuff that had very little to do with software engineering.

Onboarding engineers into an ongoing software engineering project is a bit of an art; and choosing the right job is also a bit of an art.

Looking back, I wasted my time going on job interviews. My first job was actually better than I realized.

In my current job, a lot of "first projects" for incoming engineers are lame, but they expose the incoming engineers to our process, code base, and the internals of our product.

IMO, it's too early to leave your position. It would be different if you had a toxic boss; or toxic co-workers; or found out that your company made its profits by killing kittens. In this case, however, you just don't like your first project.

I'd explain to your manager that you understand that someone needs to do the grunt work, and then be assertive that you didn't sign up to write Java Swing applications. Don't threaten to quit, but make it very clear that you'd like to work on something else.

You might need to be the donkey with the carrot hanging from the stick for 3-9 months, but if your manager is good, he'll get the message.