Some background first, I'm a Senior Java Dev who works in investment banks based in London. I work as a contractor (which for those not familiar means that I'm not a permanent employee, I have a set term contract) and have done for 14 years. I graduated in 1993 and have worked as a software engineer ever since. I can honestly say I love my...

Some days your abilities as a programmer get pushed aside and you spend most of your time bashing your head against an immoveable brick wall.

Today was one of those days.

It started off as an easy task. The application I work on send message via a bespoke messaging service (based on Tibco) and they had done an upgrade on Tuesday evening. That...

OK, OK. This has been done to death elsewhere but I want to get my thoughts down regarding IDEs.

For years I never used one because they were slow and rubbish but 5 years ago I started using Eclipse and discovered that they could be useful. Since then I've mostly used Eclipse but over the last year I've deliberately been trying out...