Software is too expensive to build cheaply...

There's a common idiom in Java for writing the equals() method. Straight from the classic book, "Effective Java", it looks like this:

public boolean equals(Object obj) {
  if (this == obj) { return true; }
  if (obj instanceof ThisClass == false) { return false; }
  ThisClass other = (ThisClass) obj;
  return this.importantField1.equals(other.importantField1) && this.importantField2.equals(other.importantField2);
}

When using Hibernate, particularly with lazy proxy classes, it's important that you stick to this idiom!

Joel's busy complaining that teaching Java in comp-sci courses makes life too easy for people, because they don't have to deal with pointers and recursion. News flash for you, Joel: the times have changed, and new tools are available.

Purely as an experiment, I'm using FeedBurner to keep track of the site usage.

You don't have to change your RSS feed: I'm redirecting the old ones through to FeedBurner. As a matter of fact, I suggest you don't change your feed - that way, if I drop FeedBurner, you will automatically switch back to the old direct link.

In addition: at this time, it's only the main feed that's been moved to FeedBurner. The category archives, which have a fairly large following of their own, are not going through FeedBurner - yet. :)

Martin Fowler just wrote an entry on implicit interfaces. This actually would be very useful, but I think I can see why language designers wouldn't adopt it (at least, not outright).

Catching up on my podcasts this week, I was listening to a presentation by Ze Frank at PopTech 05 on the way home today.. Having listened to it, I'm convinced it should have come with a health warning: "Warning: Listening to this presentation may cause uncontrollable laughter. Do not drive or operate heavy equipment while listening to this presentation"

I'm considering buying one of those thar MacBook Pros, but at a base price of AU$3199, it's a little pricy. Now, Apple has a long-standing reputation of charging premium prices, but seeing as how the MacBook is Intel-based, it should be possible to do some good price comparison.

Dell has released the new Inspiron 9400, which is also based on the Intel Core Duo chip. So, we can do a comparison that is better than Apples to Oranges on this.