help me pick a new IDE

[alexweber15]

hey all,

getting kinda frustrated lately with the amount of extra work im doing debugging a script...

 

i started php using dreamweaver a couple years ago im not sure why and i like it for doing the whole front-end thing, but really its very limited as a PHP development tool.

 

i constantly find myself polluting my scripts with echos and var_dumps and whatnot and its a real pain in the ass debugging.

 

i loved the good ol VB6 days when i could set breakpoints and step through functions and stuff and this is pretty standard stuff.

 

SO,

can anyone please suggest me a better IDE?

 

thx! 

[laffin]

Zend Is Great

Nusphere PHPEd is pretty good as well

 

lots of tools for debugging as well as code writing (tool tips when ya enter functions, code completion)

 

but if ya dun need all the snazzy stuff, there is DevPHP (OpenSource) which works with xdebug (OpenSource).

and is quite small.

 

[redarrow]

zend the best, but other's in uni, like free notepad++

[laffin]

npp is good, but its not meant for php debugging.

Its good for writing code in general, but is not specific to any one language or for programming.

 

[redarrow]

laffin you can debug in php and any language. it a free program, and design from all programmers in the project, and believe it or not, it designed with c++, same as php.

 

Here a php plug in for notepad++.

 

http://www.ourwikicommunity.com/wiki/How_to_Setup_BDGp_debugger_in_Notepad%2B%2B_to_Debug_PHP

[charleshill]

I just installed DevPHP.  Looks pretty good.  I've tried notepad++ and didn't care for it.

[nrg_alpha]

My weapon of choice is Netbeans 6.5 php edition.

[redarrow]

Net beans looks grate.

 

never used it, just watched the tutorial, looks grate.

 

only thing it so fast it unreal, why it free well good, thort that would be sold.

 

has it got regular exasperation help, in the program of net beans.

[nrg_alpha]

has it got regular exasperation help, in the program of net beans.

 

I think you mean regular expressions (exasperation means being irritated, annoyed, that sort of thing). And if you are asking if it has regex help, to my knowledge, no (unless there is a plug in that I don't know about - the system has a plug in option containing a list of available plugins, and I don't see any for regex help).

 

There are many sites that offer regex help though (like regular-expressions.info) for example. Or you can have a look at the book Mastering Regular Expressions as well. There are plenty of resources on the web for that sort of thing too (like this one here on the freak...)

[alexweber15]

dude, actually "regular exasperation" is usually correct 

 

and thanks for the suggestions, gonna take a look at the open-source one, i have netbeans installed too for java and i think its the full version so ill give that a shot too

[jjacquay712]

I just got an open source IDE called aptana... its pretty good, i would give it a shot.

[alexweber15]

I just got an open source IDE called aptana... its pretty good, i would give it a shot.

 

man i just took a look at the website and it looks awesome! 

 

one thing that always pissed me off about dreamweaver was its piss-poor PHP code completion and this has even got a jQuery plugin... sweet!

 

downloading now, gonna try it on a new project asap!

 

thx!

[Daniel0]

I'll say Zend Studio as well. It's great.

[xylex]

There's basically three categories for IDE's these days

 

Eclipse based - Zend, Aptana, PDT and PHPEclipse

• Zend is a commercial product, pricey compared to all the free options, but generally considered to be the most complete PHP IDE out there.
   
  
• PDT is a free open source project now backed by Zend, and is similar but less robust than the full Zend IDE.
   
  
• Aptana is a good IDE, free for the basic PHP editor, and commercially backed.  Though not quite as extensive as Zend when it comes to PHP, Aptana studio supports many other languages and can give you a more consistent set of features/functionality/behavior than using the language specific plugins if you are jumping language to language a lot
   
  
• PHPEclipse used to be the main Eclipse editor for PHP, but with Zend making the push with PDT, there seems to be dwindling support and use of this
  

 

 

NetBeans based

• I only know of the main PHP addon for NetBeans.  I've typically seen this used more by Java guys/environments who also do PHP than a lot of straight PHP guys using it, but this is backed by Sun, the owners of MySQL, and it looks like they're trying to do some cool integration between the two there, so I wouldn't sell it short.
  

 

Everything else

It's pretty rare that I talk to someone anymore who works in a team environment that isn't using an Eclipse or a NetBeans based IDE.  Not that they're necessarily bad, but when the other ones are really good, widely used and supported, and can be customized easily to work with many languages and dev environments, they kind of set the standard.

[alexweber15]

at the moment all i code is PHP and related web stuff like Javascript, CSS, XML, etc

 

but at uni we have Java and also C# classes and in my free time im trying to learn Flex so I guess Eclipse is pretty solid in that respect as the only language it doesn't support is .NET and frankly i hate it and only use it for uni assignments...

 

I'm just wrapping up a project I have to deliver this week, then I'll have some time to mess around with other IDEs and see which one jells for me

[qqwet]

I'm using netbeans and i'm very happy with it.

It has a good integration with SVN, and it does automatic ftp upload to test your webpages online...

[nrg_alpha]

Well, the only other IDE I used in the past was Dreamweaver (which I still do like). But once I test-drove Netbeans, I couldn't go back.

 

It offers quite a few nifty features like code templates (example, typing in 'cls' then hit tab to have Netbeans output an empty class with the class name awaiting you to name it something else.. or similar stuff like typing 'iter' + tab to get a for-loop, or 'fore' + tab to get a foreach loop, etc.. there's quite a few templates available, plus you can custom build your own).

 

I have also made use of making macros... so if I want to output the contents of an array, I recorded the key strokes - echo '<pre>'.print_r($, true); So I bind that to a key, hit the key, and now, with the cursor already positioned in front of the dollar sign, I simply type in the array's name.

 

Being able to start typing out something, (say 'str') and hit ctrl + space, I'm greeted with a code completion dialog box containing everything starting with str. Either Double click on the right str function, or keep typing to narrow down the selection till you have the right one, and done.

 

Very quick stuff like this those as examples just makes things faster and easier.

 

This is not to say other IDE's can't do some / all that kind of stuff (I'm sure like most other pros-cons, other IDEs offer stuff that Netbeans doesn't), but bang for buck (heck, it's free), it offers serious flexibility and robust features. I'm still explorering some of it's other features.. there's plenty to soak up. Ultimately however, choose which IDE is comfortable for you, as in the end, it is you using it.