> ...people either like> to program or they don't. When they don't, they and> everyone else would be better off if they found something> else they liked.I agree entirely. But that is an 'ideal world' solution. In the 'real world' of programming (which for me takes place in medium to large corporations) you just don't have the luxury of hiring...

Apologies. Dale not Dave!

Dave,You seem to b happy with financial rewards, provided they're made on a collective rather than individual basis, but I'm still curious about how you deal with individual performance. Do you just ignore he fact that some employees perform better than others? What positive incentives do you advocate to get people to improve performance? What...

> In fact, I won't work overtime for money. I do it for my teammates and to take responsibility for my own estimates.The thing is, though, is that your contract is not with your team mates, but with your employer. Saying that the overtime (or whatever) you might do is for your team mates rather than your employer implies, to me, skewed...

> Firstly... get rid of bonuses and at-risk pay.OK, you've removed my primary incentive for anti-social work activities (e.g. overtime, weekend work, pushing for deadlines, etc.). Um, well at least I can spend more time with my family.> Secondly, get rid of employee evaluations.Fine. I now know I won't be taken to task for not pulling my weight...

There is one other important factor that can determine the choice of IDE; money. I've been using IntelliJ's Idea for some years at home by means of their early access programme (free in return for highlighting bugs or problems when they occurr). At work, however, I've been using Eclipse.Functionally there's really little to choose between them...

Also Inrellij's Idea IDE at http://www.intellij.net/eap/index.jsp

An alternate interpretation is simply that they're not about to give you - for nothing - a list of alternate products to theirs and a feature by feature comparison, without good reason.Vince.

Well, I've done a few tests and the results don't seem illuminating.I do need - TimeZone.setDefault(newZone); - but it doesn't appear to make any difference whether or not I include a timezone in the Calendar.getInstance() method. Resetting to the original default timezone doesn't appear to be necessary once the Timezone objects have gone out...

I've in the process of refactoring some duplicated code, part of which is:TimeZone oldZone = TimeZone.getDefault(); TimeZone newZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/London"); TimeZone.setDefault(newZone);   Date currentDate = Calendar.getInstance(newZone).getTime();   TimeZone.setDefault(oldZone); The purpose of the code is to get the...

> The most important thing about documentation is that it is> correct,Although this seems obvious, I have often found that differences between the code comments and the code itself to be a useful indicator of where to start looking for problems. In that way, bad comments can act a bit like a warning light.Ideally, what we want is code that...

> At last year's OSCON pretty> close to half of the laptops there (and most everyone had> a laptop) were Apples.On the other hand, I don't know anyone who owns an Apple. My company has thousands of PCs. Last week I saw an Apple in one of the offices. The first I've seen in years. But (similarly to your experience above) this one office was...

> I mean why should I help> Microsoft extend their monopoly?Linux is exactly what Microsoft needs to keep it dominating the market. It soaks up all the talent and user base that might otherwise gravitate towards something that might be a market threat (e.g. Apple).> Their products are mediocre at bestThis is just wishful thinking. Their core...

A good guide to to to convert from one java data type to another can be found at http://mindprod.com/converter.html.For going int -> String, the following alternatives are suggested:// to String g from int i /* best for readabilty */ g = Integer.toString(i); /* best for maintainablity */ g = String.valueOf(i); /* or */ g = Integer.toString(i, 7...

> The scatched curve keeps rising higher and higher with> every bump. I think that Bumps do appear, but the curve> flattens again after I did the change. So the bumps don't> keep rising, but they fall of again.> The difference is probably due to differences in interpretive detail than in substance. I think the idea is that once a cost is...