Bought Zend Studio: Time to Laugh or Cry

[LPH]

On May 6th 2012 I posted the reasons I was learning PHP. The journey has been a worthy adventure. I ended by stating, "After 15 years of avoiding PHP code - I look forward to the day I can contribute to WP and XF with original code."

After working with eclipse for a few days, it became obvious that the value in finding functions was worth the effort to install Zend Server as well as eclipse (a "loss" of a few days!). Eclipse really helped me see the importance of PHP coding style.

Now ... here I sit. It's been a little more than a year later and today is another milestone. Today I bought Zend Studio.

Moving to an IDE seemed the next logical step to take while learning PHP. I still stink at MVC as well as procedural code. In fact, lines of code can still make my head ache with intensity. My hope is that Zend Studio will help me

Regardless, is it time to laugh or cry as I press onward into PHP development?

 

[Arantor]

Try it and see if it works for you. I can say that it didn't work for me, but it's not really about any perceived flaws in Zend Studio, more about how it doesn't fit my workflow and I don't really want to change what's been working quite well for me for a decade.

For someone newer to a language I can see how the IDE thing can work out. Recently I've been playing with Unity and MonoDevelop has been invaluable. But for a hardened veteran, I'm not sure the benefit is there so much.

For background, I took my 5.3 certification in January, and folks who pass the core certification get a licence for Zend Studio, so it wasn't as if I had any 'investment' in it, I didn't pay for it so I had no reason to try to get along with it - and it just didn't suit me. It might work for you - as you have it, give it a go.

 

[LPH]

@Arantor Congratulations on passing your certification!

The proof in keeping Zend Studio will be when (if) I have code worthy of a public release and someone else looks at it to say ... "not bad."

 

[Digital Doctor]

Exciting stuff !

 

[Arantor]

Thanks I'm sure you'll find a tool that suits you for working with the language. It may be Zend Studio, it may not. In my case, I stick with Notepad++, others highly recommend SublimeText 2 and phpDesigner, but generally it seems to be the more proficient you are with a language, the less an IDE will help you. I'm just too set in my ways for an IDE to help me hahahaha.

All the best with it and I'm sure if you have any questions about PHP, someone here will be able to answer them as they come along

 

[Chris D]

Up until I bought a Mac the only IDE I would touch is NuSphere PhpEd which is Windows only. I hated all java-based IDEs (most of them, then).

It wasn't sitting right with me that I'd be using one IDE on a Mac and another on Windows so I'm now currently using Eclipse with PDT on both Mac and Windows. I quite like it.

Eclipse still seems to have the occasional performance issue but both machines I develop at now are decent spec so it's not too bad and the rest is nothing that another 4GB of RAM and an SSD won't sort out.

I know that Zend Studio performance seems to be slightly better than Eclise, plus I'm pretty sure I've seen some optimisation guides for it. I will eventually be purchasing Zend Studio. I probably should while it's still only $149...

Though part of me is still secretly waiting for them to do another amazing deal. They did it for $50 a last year but it sold out pretty quickly.

 

[SneakyDave]

I have a nasty debugging issue on my installation of Zend Studio, and support, although helpful, can't seem to find the problem. They want to do a webex meeting to get it resolved, but of course, they want to do it on Israel time since that's where they're based. Don't know when I'll be able to squeeze that in.

But that's the only problem I've had with Zend Studio. Still a lot to learn with it.

 

[LPH]

I'm sure if you have any questions about PHP, someone here will be able to answer them as they come along

This is exactly why I felt comfortable last year to even start exploring PHP code.