Which PHP IDE? / What do you use to code?

Netbeans has become slow, even with the optimisations I've placed in the config file :/

Great - will give it a go later! Thanks again

No problem - I'd like to see how it fares out for you

well... I have AMD X6 Phenom II 3.2 Ghz CPU and 8 GB RAM... I never feel that

I'm doing PHP development on a MacBook Air. I don't need a very powerful development machine.

I've been using Zend Studio for about 6 years now. I don't think there is a perfect IDE, but this is pretty close for all of my needs. I've messed with other packages and just keep coming back to Zend. Ultimately it seems like a waste of my time messing with other IDEs. I'd rather stay productive and code with something I know very well rather than try to learn something new to see if it could do what the old one did.

And it runs the same on my macbook pro as it does my windows boxes, so I can always stay in the same environment. Yes I have textmate and all of its "goodies", but its still nothing compared to Zend. It does make a great regular text editor and is good for quick things though, but I wouldn't want to do serious coding or debugging in it. You may completely disregard my opinion. Its ok. Its just mine.

Why use an IDE? Imagine being handed a project built on some framework that you don't know. Or just some big codebase. With a good IDE, you just set a breakpoint and run the code to there. Every file that the code utilizes as you step through the app loads up. You instantly see the relationships of objects and how they interact. You immediately see all variables and their states. This took less than 3 seconds. If I were to manually trace my way through all of this to try to learn how the app is relating with objects, it can take a LONG time compared to that simple 3 seconds.

On top of that, you see all methods of objects without opening up that file. Its GREAT for exploring. I can learn an app 10x faster than you can with a non-IDE guaranteed. Which means I can work faster and more efficiently than you non ide types . If you and I are equally talented as a coder and it takes you 10x longer to do something because of the tools you use...who will get the jobs?

In addition to CroNiX, using an IDE can enhance your knowledge of a language. For example, Zend Studio includes a semantic checker. It helps correct/improve your code, e.g

PHP:

 if ("value" == $myvar) {function();}

instead of

PHP:

 if ($myvar == "value") {function();}

So you don't actually set the variable, causing that expression to initiate

PHP:

function()

everytime it gets there.

One thing I don't like about Zend though, is their pricing. They don't have a standard pricing for products. Take Zend Studio. In the EU, it costs €299.00 whereas, in the US, it costs $299. There's about £120 difference there.

ActiveState Komodo Edit is free open source edit for perl, python, tcl, php, ruby, and javascript
http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit

I use TSE Pro religiously, can be configured for just about anything. It has been around for very long time.
http://semware.com/

May as well plug PhpStorm since it is the only IDE I have ever been completely satisfied with. And I have basically tried them all. And works on linux which is where all website developers should be working (or at least on mac I spose).

I even paid for it, and this is the internet... I never pay for stuff! Ever! I suggest everyone try it

So you're using xenforo,etc... illegal? *scnr*

I use visual studio's
but that's for .NET

I'll check out some of the suggestions in this thread for php coding

Haha, I only pay for the truly awesome stuff

There's a "add-on" available to get php support in visual studi http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php

Hell yeah!!!
I use UltraEdit myself, been using it for at least 10 years now. The ability to edit files remotely is a huge plus, and what initially sold me on the project.

My favorite programmers editor is called TSE (The Semware Editor), originally called QEdit and was one of predominant shareware editors back in the pre-internet/world-wide-web days.... used extensively in the BBS community.

http://www.semware.com

I am using the Eclipse/PDT. Even thought it's a bit slow on my laptop, that does the work pretty well. The debug function is what helps me a lot! And of course, highlight syntax, code-completion... you know, all those things that appears on programmers' wet dreams

For basic/quick/fix edits I use Notepad++, on Windows.

So I know this thread is old... but I kept ending up in it. I ended up trying more or less all the major IDEs out there... the ones that I didn't hate right off the bat, I gave it about a week to see what I thought about it after using it awhile. Of all the ones mentioned in this thread, PhpStorm was my favorite... but it always felt "sluggish" and I always found myself waiting on it and I just ended up not getting as much done as I did with the previous system I used (which was BBEdit). BBedit doesn't have a lot of the advanced stuff, but the bottom line is I got more done faster when I used it.

That being said... I was rather annoyed with myself that I wasn't using a "full blown" IDE... so over the weekend I poked around a bit to see if I could make the ones I tried faster/more to my liking somehow.

Long story short is that for some reason I totally forgot about Zend Studio... so I gave it a try. It doesn't feel sluggish like PhpStorm, Eclipse/PDT or Aptana did to me. And does some of the little things very well. As a bonus it handles stuff built with Zend Framework/MVC *very* well (*cough* XenForo). I think this finally is going to be the IDE that breaks me of BBEdit.

http://www.zend.com/products/studio/

Oh this thread. I have been using PhpStorm for a while now and used it after finding Zend Studio did little annoying things here and there. PhpStorm is, in my opinion, easily the best IDE for PHP. However that isn't saying much, they are all more or less the same resource hogging applications.

I stumbled across this article. http://blog.stuartherbert.com/php/2...tbeans-to-sublime-text-2-for-php-development/.
It is easily, VERY easily, the best code editor out there. And how it works makes you fast and more efficient. You don't realize just how slow your Java IDE is until you use this. It's like (as he states) comparing the speed of firefox to chrome. And it is still in beta and has many helpful plugins which are also very easy to add. Which brings me to the second article http://blog.stuartherbert.com/php/2012/02/28/setting-up-sublime-text-2-for-php-development/. The first video shows just how much faster it is and the second one is a must see if you want to try out this editor as it explains how to setup the plugin infrastructure to basically work like apt-get.

I have been using it for less than a week and have yet to need to open PhpStorm. All its benefits just don't matter when I get to use a nice, fast and sexy editor like this one.

This lot of text is really pointless, those 2 articles will convince you to give it a go.

Edit: however people who live by an IDE and certain features might be hard pressed to even give this a go or try and simply say no to yourself. This is all fine, it would still be the best editor for quick little things.