> > > I use IntelliJ IDEA and I've never had any troubles with my equals() > and hashCode() methods. >
That is probably fine 90% of the time but I'd be careful if you're not actually giving it a bit of thought. It is actually quite difficult to correctly implement equals in a general, universal way and since an IDE cannot infer semantics, there are times when an otherwise standard implementation will need to be adjusted. It isn't rocket science - but it can be tricky. If you're interested, see the paper I linked to earlier as well as some of Joshua Bloch's posts on the topic. -Luther
