Links of the day

1. A Guide to Hiring programmers: The High Cost Of Low Quality. This revsys blog post talks about why hiring good programmers is well worth it and gives some tips on attracting and keeping top developer talent.
2. Desktop Applications are Dead. Eugueny Kontsevoy’s incredibly entertaining rant on why Microsoft and Vista put the last nail in the coffin of the desktop app as we know it.
3. Java: One Platform to Rule Them All? Michael Urban starts a good discussion on the standardization of various tools and languages on the Java platform. Check out the responses, they are very enlightening as well.