What is the motivation for IBM to invest millions of dollars in the Eclipse project? Assuming they don't see it as a charitable donation but as business investment, where are they expecting to make their money back?Vince.

Some quotes from the article:"Creator...is targeted at the Visual Basic developer -- the sort of person who doesn't want to spend all of his time thinking about the guts of writing code.""Microsoft set the list price of tools at something so low that it's almost impossible for an independent company that's just focused on tools to actually...

What's the problem? It's only a few minutes waiting to load up a game that will take a month or two to complete.I've just completed it and can thoroughly recommend it.My copy came on a single disc (probably a DVD rather than a CD by the sounds of things but I don't have it to hand).

Here's a general request to anyone posting technical articles on the Internet:The first time you use an abbreviation (such as "SOA"), please include the meaning of the abbreviation (after it in brackets). I've just read the original article and the replies and I still have no idea what they were talking about.Coincidentally: I'm currently...

14. The salesman's initial ball-park estimate of cost and time estimate based on a (reported) two minute phone discussion with the customer, will form the two fixed goal-posts against which the project will be measured.

> The down load is available here....Have you succeeded in downloading version 3.0. I haven't. And judging by the apparent exponential growth of mirror sites being referenced from the download page, a lot of other people are having problems, too.

> Wow. I'm glad you're not a doctor.I take it from that comment that you believe that the highly trained, regulated and monitored medical profession is better than our own unregulated and generally untrained (or self trained) profession?A quick tour of the internet soon reveals that doctors are, on average, average, too. See below for some...

...with better formatting...before:int main(){ incr() + decr(); return 0;}after:int main(){ incr(); decr(); return 0;}

If the particular code cannot be demonstrated to behave in the way you want, isn't the solution simply to replace it with different code that does?I'm not a C programmer, but wouldn't the rewrite below provide the predictability that you're after?before:int main(){ incr() + decr(); return 0;}after:int main(){ incr(); decr(); return 0;}Vince.

> Mike Spille,> What maybe you don’t realize is that your argument sounds> like the mafia...Strange. To me it looks like one of the few sensible and considered entries in this thread.Vince.

Sun have targeted VB developers ever since the language was released. See http://java.sun.com/j2se/vb.development.center.html

> Private methods are typically pieces of duplicate code> that have been refactored from other methods. Thus, the> "indirect testing" concept is going to work fine, and you> will not need to directly test private methods in the> large majority of situations.I'm not really convinced that this is really the case. If a piece of code warrants its...

> ...where in the world are you?Ah, that could be the clincher. I'm messing about with airline timetables. Looks like I can get rid of some of the 'offsets' I've been using to make adjustments.Thanks (for both replies),Vince.

// Deprecated. Date d1 = new Date(104, 05, 19, 21, 25);   // New improved. Date d2 = new GregorianCalendar(2004, 05, 19, 21, 25).getTime(); Could someone let me know (briefly) what I've gained by using the second method of creating a given date.time?Vince.

> One thing that I've learned is that when a person is> having their world view challenged they will often times> react angrily like Mike has. Something about my article> has put Mike into a position where he feels he has to> protect himself.In what way was Mike's reply angry or an attempt to 'protect himself' and from what? It looked to me...