This was how they did it at a LARGE company that I worked at recently. Their solution was not allowing any text editor except EditPlus & VI, and any OS except Windows 95 and HP-UX. (They are moving to Win2k in the next six months if they can figure out how to do it without bringing down the network.) Allowed programming languages were Java 1.3.1, PHP, Pl/SQL and Korn shell. They did have official version control software, PVCS, but only the managers were allowed to use it so as to keep things effecient.

The company worked very hard at keeping desktop problems to a minimum saving a lot of time and money in terms of tech support and system administration. It also helped keep quality programming down to a minimum.

It's amazing to me that companies hire people that they entrust with programming very expensive networked servers and yet don't think that they can be given control of a $1,000 desktop workstation. Garbage in, garbage out.

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